THE 

JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

BY 
OKAKURA-YOSHISABURO    . 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 
BY 

GEORGE   MEREDITH 

WIVfiMITY 

NEW  YORK 

JAMES  POTT  &  CO. 
1905 


Copyright,  1905,  by  James  Pott  &  Co. 
First  Impression,  April,  1905 


■off  in 


J.  T.    TAPLEY  CO.,  BOOK  MANUFACTURERS,  NEW  YORK 


TO 

MY  BROTHER 

Bellario.  Sir,  if  I  have  made 

A  fault  in  ignorance,  instruct  my  youth : 
I  shall  be  willing,  if  not  able,  to  learn: 
Age  and  experience  will  adorn  my  mind 
With  larger  knowledge;  and  if  I  have  done 
A  wilful  fault,  think  me  not  past  all  hope 
For  once. 

Philaster,  Act.  IX.  Sc.  I, 


PREFACE 

The  following  pages  owe  their  existence  to 
Mr.  Martin  White,  whose  keen  interest  in 
comparative  sociology  led  to  the  opening  of 
special  courses  for  its  investigation  in  the 
University  of  London. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  P.  J.  Hartog, 
Academic  Registrar  of  the  University,  as 
well  as  to  Dr.  and  Mrs.  E.  R.  Edwards, 
who  inspired  me  with  the  courage  to  take 
the  present  task  on  my  inexperienced  shoul- 
ders. But  above  all  I  render  the  expression 
of  my  deepest  obligation  to  Professor  Walter 
Rippmann.  Had  it  not  been  for  his  friendly 
interest  and  help,  I  would  not  have  been  able 
thus  to  come  before  an  English  public.    For 

the  peculiarities  of  thought  and  language, 

vii 


viii       THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

which,  if  nothing  else,  might  at  least  make 
the  booklet  worthy  of  a  perusal,  I  naturally 
assume  the  full  responsibility  myself. 

With  these  prefatory  words,  I  venture  to 
submit  this  essay  to  the  lenient  reception  of 
my  readers. 


INTRODUCTION 

We  have  had  illuminating  books  upon 
Japan.  Those  of  Lafcadio  Hearn  will  al- 
ways be  remembered  for  the  poetry  he 
brought  in  them  to  bear  upon  the  poetic  as- 
pects of  the  country  and  the  people.  Bud- 
dhism had  a  fascination  for  him,  as  it  had  for 
Mr.  Fielding  in  his  remarkable  book  on  the 
practice  of  this  religion  in  Burma.1  There 
is  also  the  work  of  Captain  Brinkley,  to 
which  we  are  largely  indebted. 

These  Lectures  by  a  son  of  the  land,  deliv- 
ered at  the  University  of  London,  are  com- 
pendious and  explicit  in  a  degree  that  enables 
us  to  form  a  summary  of  much  that  has  been 

1  The  Soul  of  a  People. 

ix 


x  THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

otherwise  partially  obscure,  so  that  we  get 
nearer  to  the  secret  of  this  singular  race  than 
we  have  had  the  chance  of  doing  before.  He 
traces  the  course  of  Confucianism,  Laoism, 
Shintoism,  in  the  instruction  it  has  given  to 
his  countrymen  for  the  practice  of  virtue, 
as  to  which  Lao-tze  informs  us  with  a  piece 
of  '  Chinese  metaphysics '  that  can  be  had 
without  having  recourse  to  the  dictionary: 
'  Superior  virtue  is  non-virtue.  Therefore 
it  has  virtue.  Inferior  virtue  never  loses 
sight  of  virtue.  Therefore  it  has  no  virtue. 
Superior  virtue'  is  non-assertive  and  without 
pretension.  Inferior  virtue  asserts  and 
makes  pretensions.'  It  is  childishly  subtle 
and  easy  to  be  understood  of  a  young  people 
in  whose  minds  Buddhism  and  Shintoism 
formed  a  part. 

The  Japanese  have  had  the  advantage  of 

possessing  a  native  Nobility  who  were  true 

nobles,  not  invaders  and  subjugators.    They 

were,  in  the  highest  sense,  men  of  honour, 

\ 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

to  whom,  before  the  time  of  this  dreadful 
war,  Hara-kiri  was  an  imperative  resource, 
under  the  smallest  suspicion  of  disgrace. 
How  rigidly  they  understood  and  practised 
Virtue,  in  the  sense  above  cited,  is  exempli- 
fied in  the  way  they  renounced  their  privi- 
leges for  the  sake  of  the  commonweal  when  * 
the  gates  of  Japan  were  thrown  open  to  the 
West. 

Bushido,  or  the  '  way  of  the  Samurai/  has 
become  almost  an  English  word,  so  greatly 
has  it  impressed  us  with  the  principle  of  re- 
nunciation on  behalf  of  the  Country's  wel- 
fare. This  splendid  conception  of  duty  has 
been  displayed  again  and  again  at  Port 
Arthur  and  on  the  fields  of  Manchuria,  not 
only  by  the  Samurai,  but  by  a  glorious  com- 
monalty imbued  with  the  spirit  of  their 
chiefs. 

All  this  is  shown  clearly  by  Professor 
Okakura  in  this  valuable  book. 

It  proves  to  general  comprehension  that 


xii        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

such  a  people  must  be  unconquerable  even 
if  temporarily  defeated;  and  that  is  not  the 
present  prospect  of  things.  Who  could  con- 
quer a  race  of  forty  millions  having  the  con- 
tempt of  death  when  their  country's  inviola- 
bility is  at  stake!  Death,  moreover,  is  de- 
spised by  them  because  they  do  not  believe 
in  it.  '  The  departed,  although  invisible,  are 
thought  to  be  leading  their  ethereal  life  in  the 
same  world  in  much  the  same  state  as  that  to 
which  they  had  been  accustomed  while  on 
earth/  And  so,  '  when  the  father  of  a  Japan- 
ese family  begins  a  journey  of  any  length, 
the  raised  part  of  his  room  will  be  made  sa- 
cred to  his  memory  during  his  temporary  ab- 
sence; his  family  will  gather  in  front  of  it 
and  think  of  him,  expressing  their  devotion 
and  love  in  words  and  gifts  in  kind.  In  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  families  that  have 
some  one  or  other  of  their  members  fighting 
for  the  nation  in  this  dreadful  war,  there  will 
not  be  even  one  solitary  house  where  the 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

mother,  wife,  or  sister  is  not  practising  this 
simple  rite  of  endearment  for  the  beloved  and 
absent  member  of  the  family/  Spartans  in 
the  fight,  Stoics  in  their  grief. 

Concerning  the  foolish  talk  of  the  Yellow 
Peril,  a  studious  perusal  of  this  book  will 
show  it  to  be  fatuous.  It  is  at  least  unlikely 
in  an  extreme  degree  that  such  a  people,  reck- 
less of  life  though  they  be  in  front  of  dan- 
ger, but  Epicurean  in  their  wholesome  love 
of  pleasure  and  pursuit  of  beauty,  will  be  in- 
flated to  insanity  by  the  success  of  their  arms. 
Those  writers  who  have  seen  something  ma- 
lignant and  inimical  behind  their  gracious 
politeness,  have  been  mere  visitors  on  the 
fringe  of  the  land,  alarmed  by  their  skill  in 
manufacturing  weapons  and  explosives — for 
they  are  inventive  as  well  as  imitative,  a  peo- 
ple not  to  be  trifled  with;  but  this  was  be- 
cause their  instinct  as  well  as  their  emissar- 
ies warned  them  of  a  pressing  need  for  the 
means  of  war.    Japan  and  China  have  had 


xiv       THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

experience  of  Western  nations,  and  that  is 
at  the  conscience  of  suspicious  minds. 

It  may  be  foreseen  that  when  the  end  has 
come,  the  Kaiser,  always  honourably  eager 
for  the  influence  of  his  people,  will  draw  a 
glove  over  the  historic  '  Mailed  Fist '  and 
offer  it  to  them  frankly.  It  will  surely  be 
accepted,  and  that  of  France,  we  may  hope; 
Russia  as  well.  England  is  her  ally — to  re- 
main so,  we  trust;  America  is  her  friend. 
She  has,  in  fact,  won  the  admiration  of 
Friend  and  Foe  alike. 

GEORGE  MEREDITH. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

Since  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
when  Marco  Polo,  on  his  return  to  Venice, 
wrote  about  '  Cipango/  an  island,  as  he 
stated,  '  1500  miles  off  the  coast  of  China, 
fabulously  rich,  and  inhabited  by  people  of 
agreeable  manners/  many  a  Western  pen 
has  been  wielded  to  tell  all  kinds  of  tales 
concerning  the  Land  of  the  Rising  Sun.  Her 
long  seclusion;  her  anxious  care  to  guard 
inviolate  the  simple  faith  which  had  been 
gravely  threatened  by  the  Roman  Church; 
her  hearty  welcome  of  the  honoured  guests 
from  the  West,  after  centuries  of  independ- 
ent growth;  the  sudden,  almost  pathetic, 
changes  she  has  gone  through  in  the  past 
forty  years  in  order  to  equip  herself  for  a 
place  on  the  world's  stage  where  powers  play 
their  game  of  balance ;  the  lessons  she  lately 
taught  the  still  slumbering  China  through 

15 


16        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

the  mouths  of  thundering  cannon:  all  this 
has  called  into  existence  the  expression  of 
opinions  and  comments  of  very  varying 
merit  and  tone ;  and  especially  since  the  out- 
break of  the  present  war,  when  the  daily 
news  from  the  scenes  of  action,  where  my 
brethren  are  fighting  for  the  cause  of 
wronged  justice  and  menaced  liberty,  is 
showing  the  world  page  after  page  of  pa- 
triotism and  loyalty,  written  unmistakably 
in  the  crimson  letters  of  heroes'  blood, — all 
this  has  given  occasion  to  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica to  think  the  matter  over  afresh.  Here 
you  have  at  least  a  nation  different  in  her 
development  from  any  existing  people  in  the 
Occident.  Governed  from  time  immemorial 
by  the  immediate  descendants  of  the  Sun- 
Goddess,  whose  merciful  rule  early  taught  us 
to  offer  them  our  voluntary  tribute  of  devo- 
tion and  love,  we  have  based  our  social  sys- 
tem on  filial  piety,  that  necessary  outcome  of 
ancestor-worship  which  presupposes  altru- 
ism on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  loy- 
alty and  love  of  the  fatherland.  Different 
doctrines  of  religion  and  morality  have  found 
their  way  from  their  continental  homes  to 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        17 

the  silvery  shores  of  the  Land  of  the  Gods, 
only  to  render  their  several  services  towards 
consolidating  and  widening  the  so-called 
*  Divine  Path/  that  national  cult  whose  un- 
written tenets  have  lurked  for  thousands  of 
years  hidden  in  the  most  sacred  corner  of  our 
hearts,  whose  pulse  is  ever  beating  its  rhythm 
of  patriotism  and  loyalty.  Buddhist  meta- 
physics, Confucian  and  Taoist  philosophy, 
have  been  fused  together  in  the  furnace  of 
Shintoism  for  fifteen  centuries  and  a  half, 
and  that  apart  from  the  outer  world,  in  the 
island  home  of  Japan,  where  the  blue  sky 
looks  down  on  gay  blossoms  and  gracefully 
sloping  mountains.  The  final  amalgamation 
of  these  forces  produces,  among  other  results, 
the  works  of  art  and  the  feats  of  bravery 
now  before  you,  each  bearing  the  ineffaceable 
hall-marks  of  Japan's  past  history.  Surely 
here  you  are  face  to  face  with  a  people 
worthy  of  serious  investigation,  not  only 
from  the  disinterested  point  of  view  of  a 
folk-psychologist.  It  is  a  study  which  will 
open  to  any  impartial  observer  a  new  hori- 
zon, more  so  than  would  be  the  case  if  he 
attempted  the  sociological  interpretation  of  a 
B 


18        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

nation  the  history  of  whose  development  was 
almost  identical  with  that  of  his  own.  Here 
he  meets  totally  different  sets  of  things  with 
totally  different  ways  of  looking  at  them; 
and  this  gives  him  ample  occasion  to  realise 
the  fact  that  human  thought  and  action  may 
evolve  in  several  forms  and  through  several 
channels  before  they  reach  their  respective 
culmination  where  they  all,  regardless  of 
their  original  differences,  melt  into  the  com- 
mon sea  of  truth. 

But  this  simple  fact  that  '  God  fulfills 
Himself  in  many  ways/  as  your  Tennyson 
has  it,  so  necessary  to  ensure  freedom  from 
national  bigotry  and  conventional  ignorance, 
so  necessary  too  for  a  proper  understanding 
of  oneself  as  the  cumulative  product  of  a  na- 
tion's history,  has  not  always  been  kept  in 
mind,  even  by  those  otherwise  well-meaning 
authors,  whose  works  have  some  charm  as 
descriptive  writing,  but  give  only  a  superfi- 
cial and  often  misleading  account  of  the  in- 
ner life  of  the  nation.  True,  a  great  deal  of 
excellent  work  has  been  achieved  by  a  num- 
ber of  scholars  of  lasting  merit,  from 
Kaempfe's  memorable  work  first  published 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        19 


in  its  English  translation  as  early- 
down  to  the  admirable  Interpretation 
ten  last  year  by  the  late  Mr.  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
in  whose  death  Japan  lost  one  of  her  most 
precious  friends,  possessing  as  he  did  the 
scholar's  insight  and  the  poet's  pen,  two 
heavenly  gifts  seldom  found  united  in  a  sin- 
gle man.  It  is  mainly  through  the  remark- 
able labour  of  two  learned  bodies,  the  Asiatic 
Society  of  Japan,  and  the  Deutsche  Gesell- 
schaft  fur  Natur-und  Vdlkerkunde  Ostas- 
iens,  both  with  their  headquarters  in  Tokyo 
— in  whose  indefatigable  researches  the 
1  Japan  Society '  in  this  city  has  ably  joined 
since  1892 — that  most  valuable  data  have 
been  constantly  brought  to  light,  furnishing 
for  future  students  sure  bases  for  wider  gen- 
eralisations. But  owing  to  the  numerous 
hindrances — some  of  which  look  almost  in- 
surmountable to  the  Western  investigator — 
a  fair  synthetic  interpretation  of  Japan  as  a 
nation,  explaining  all  the  important  forces 
that  underlie  the  psychic  and  physical  phe- 
nomena, still  remains  to  be  written.  The 
most  formidable  of  the  difficulties  which 
meet  a  European  or  American  student  at  the 


as  1727, 
ion  writ- 

•  /-v       I — I    r»r->  ifia^  ^  I 


20        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

very  threshold  of  his  researches  is  the  totally 
different  construction  of  Japanese  society,  a 
difficulty  which  makes  it  impossible  to  under- 
stand properly  any  set  of  the  phenomena  be- 
longing to  it  apart  from  the  others  which 
surround  them.  One  could  as  well  cut  a  sin- 
gle mesh  from  a  net  without  prejudice  to  the 
neighbouring  ones !  The  proper  understand- 
ing of  things  Japanese  therefore  presupposes 
freedom  from  your  conventional  philosophy 
of  life,  and  the  power  of  viewing  things 
through  other  people's  eyes. 

Besides  this  obstacle,  there  are  many  oth- 
ers ;  for  example,  that  of  the  language.  Like 
most  other  nations  in  the  East,  we  have  been 
accustomed,  up  to  this  very  day,  to  use  a 
written  language,  divided  within  itself  into 
several  styles,  which  is  considerably  different 
from  the  vernacular.  To  make  this  state  of 
things  still  more  complicated,  Chinese  char- 
acters are  profusely  resorted  to  in  the  native 
writings,  and  are  used  not  only  as  so  many 
ideographs  for  words  of  Chinese  origin,  but 
also  to  represent  native  words.  To  make 
confusion  worse  confounded,  they  are  not 
infrequently  used  as  pure  phonetic  symbols 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT,        21 

without  any  further  meaning  attaching  to 
them.  So  one  and  the  same  sign  may  be 
read  in  half  a  dozen  different  ways,  accord- 
ing to  the  hints,  more  or  less  sure,  given  by 
the  context.  All  this  makes  the  study  of 
Japanese  immensely  difficult.  It  is  difficult 
even  for  a  Japanese  with  the  best  opportuni- 
ties; a  hundred  times  more  so,  then,  for  a 
Western  scholar  who,  if  he  cares  to  study  the 
subject  at  first  hand  at  all,  begins  this  study, 
comparatively  speaking,  late  in  life,  when 
his  memory  has  well-nigh  lost  the  capacity 
of  bearing  such  an  enormous  burden ! 

Still,  there  have  been  many  Western  schol- 
ars who,  nothing  daunted  by  the  above-men- 
tioned hindrances,  have  done  much  valuable 
work.  English  names  like  those  of  Sir  E. 
Satow,  G.  W.  Aston,  B.  H.  Chamberlain, 
Lafcadio  Hearn  are  to  be  gratefully  remem- 
bered by  all  future  students  in  this  field  of 
inquiry,  as  well  as  such  German  scholars  as 
Dr.  Baelz  and  Dr.  Florenz.  Leaving  the 
enumeration  of  general  works  on  Japan, 
whose  name  is  legion,  for  some  other  time, 
let  me  mention  one  or  two  of  those  works  of 
reference  which  a  would-be  English  scholar 


22        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

of  Japanese  matters  might  find  very  useful. 
First  of  all  Mr.  B.  H.  Chamberlain's  Things 
Japanese — a  book  which  gave  birth  to  Mr. 
J.  D.  Hall's  equally  indispensable  Things 
Chinese — containing  in  cyclopaedic  form  a 
mine  of  information  about  Japan.  Dr. 
Wenckstern's  painstaking  Japanese  Bibliog- 
raphy, with  M.  de  Losny's  earlier  attempt 
as  a  supplement,  gives  you  the  list  of  all  writ- 
ings on  Japan  in  European  tongues  that  have 
appeared  up  to  1895.  For  those  who  want 
good  books  on  the  Japanese  language,  Mr. 
Aston's  Grammar  of  the  Japanese  Written 
Language,  Mr.  Chamberlain's  Handbook  of 
Colloquial  Japanese,  as  well  as  the  same  au- 
thor's Monzi-no-Shirubi,  a  Practical  Intro- 
duction to  the  Study  of  the  Japanese  Writ- 
ing, are  the  best.  As  for  books  on  the  subject 
from  the  pen  of  the  Japanese  themselves,  Dr. 
Nitobe's  Bushido,  Explanations  of  the  Japan- 
ese Thought,  and  my  brother  K.  Okakura's 
Ideals  of  the  East,  besides  a  volume  by  sev- 
eral well-known  Japanese,  entitled  Japan  by 
the  Japanese,  are  to  be  specially  mentioned.1 

1  Professor  T.  Inouye's  little  pamphlet,  published 
first  in  French,  entitled  Sur  le  Developpement  des 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        23 

What  I  myself  propose  to  do  in  this  essay 
is  to  give  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  and  so  far 
as  is  possible  with  the  scanty  knowledge  and 
the  limited  space  at  my  disposal,  a  simple 
statement  in  plain  language  of  what  I  think 
to  be  the  fundamental  truths  necessary  for 
the  proper  understanding  of  my  fatherland. 
I  am  not  vain  enough  to  attempt  any  original 
solution  of  the  old  difficulty;  knowing  as  I 
do  my  own  deficiencies,  I  should  be  well  sat- 
isfied if  I  could  manage  to  give  you  some 
kind  of  general  introduction"  to  the  Japanese 
views  of  life. 

So  much  for  the  preliminary  remarks.  Let 
us  now  take  a  step  further  and  see  what  fac- 
tors are  to  be  considered  as  the  bases  of  mod- 
ern Japan. 

1  To  which  race  do  the  Japanese  belong  ?  ' 

is  the  first  question  asked  by  any  one  who 

wants  to  approach  our  subject  from  the  his- 

Idees  Philosophiques  au  Japon  avant  V Introduction 
de  la  Civilisation  Europeenne,  will  give  you  some  idea 
of  our  philosophic  systems.  For  a  serious  perusal,  its 
German  translation,  annotated  and  amplified,  by  Dr. 
A.  Gramatzky  (Kurze  Ubersicht  uber  die  Entwick- 
lung  der  philosophischen  Ideen  in  Japan,  Berlin, 
1897),  is  to  be  preferred, 


•4 


24        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

torical  point  of  view.  Unfortunately  not 
much  is  known  as  yet  about  our  place  in 
racial  science.  If  we  do  not  take  into  ac- 
count the  inhabitants  of  the  newly  annexed 
island  of  Formosa,  we  have,  roughly  speak- 
ing, two  very  different  races  in  our  whole 
archipelago — the  hairy  Aino  and  the  ruling 
Yamato  race,  the  former  being  the  supposed 
aborigines,  physically  sturdy  and  well  de- 
veloped, with  their  characteristic  abundant 
growth  of  hair,  who  are  at  present  to  be 
found  only  in  the  Yezo  island  in  the  north- 
ern extremity  of  Japan,  and  whose  number, 
notwithstanding  all  the  care  of  our  govern- 
ment, is  fast  dwindling,  the  sum  total  being 
not  much  more  than  15,000.  The  Aino  have 
a  tradition  that  the  land  had  been  occupied 
before  them  by  another  race  of  dwarfish  stat- 
ure called  Koropokguru,  who  are  identified 
by  some  scholars  with  those  primitive  pit- 
dwellers  known  in  our  history  as  Tuchigt- 
mo,1  whose  traces,  although  scanty,  are  still 
to  be  met  with  in  various  parts  of  Yezo. 
Anyhow,  we  see  at  the  first  dawn  of  history 

1  Professor  Milne,  Transactions  of  the  Asiatic  So- 
ciety of  Japan,  vol.  viii.  p.  82. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        25 

the  aborigines  gradually  receding  before 
the  conquering  Yamato  race,  who  are  found 
steadily  pushing  on  towards  the  north-east, 
and  who  finally  established  themselves  as  a 
ruling  body  under  the  divine  banner  of  the 
first  emperor  Jimmu,  from  whose  acces- 
sion we  reckon  our  era,  the  present  year  be- 
ing the  2565th,  according  to  our  recognised 
way  of  counting  dates. 

Suggestions,  audacious  rather  than  strictly 
scientific,  have  been  put  forward  as  to  the 
original  home  both  of  the  Aino  and  the  Jap- 
anese. The  Rev.  I.  Dooman,  for  instance, 
proposed  in  his  paper  read  before  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan  in  1897 
to  derive  both  from  the  people  who  had  been 
living,  according  to  him,  on  both  sides  of  the 
great  Himalayan  range.  *  The  Aino/  he 
says,  *  the  first  inhabitants  of  these  (Japan- 
ese) islands,  belong  to  the  South  Himalayan 
Centre ;  while  the  Japanese,  the  second  com- 
ers, belong  to  the  North  Himalayan,  com- 
monly called  Altaic  races.'  *  But  in  face  of 
the  scanty  knowledge  at  our  command  about 

1  Transactions  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan,  vol. 

XXV. 


I 


26        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

the  respective  sets  of  people  in  question,  such 
wholesale  conjecture  had  better  be  postponed 
until  some  later  time,  when  further  research 
shall  have  supplied  surer  data  for  our 
speculations.  As  regards  the  Aino,  we  must 
for  the  present  say,  on  the  authority  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain,  that,  remembering  how  the 
Aino  race  is  isolated  from  all  other  living 
races  by  its  hairiness  and  by  the  extraordi- 
nary flattening  of  the  tibia  and  humerus,  it 
is  not  strange  to  find  the  language  isolated 
too.1 

With  respect  to  the  Japanese  proper,  the 
only  thing  known  about  their  racial  affinity 
is  the  theory  proposed  by  the  German  scholar 
Dr.  Baelz,  as  the  result  of  his  elaborate  meas- 
urements both  of  living  specimens  and  skele- 
tons.2 He  considers  the  Yamato  race  to  be- 
long to  the  Mongolian  stock  of  the  Asiatic 
continent,  from  where  they  proceeded  to  Ja- 
pan by  way  of  the  Corean  peninsula.    There 

1  Memoirs  of  the  Literary  Department  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Tokyo,  vol.  i. 

8  Die  kbrperlichen  Eigenschaften  der  Japaner,  vols, 
xxviii.  and  xxxii.  of  MittheUungen  der  Gesellschaft 
fiir  die  Natur-  und  Volkerkunde  Ostasiens. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        27 

are  two  distinct  types  noticeable  among  them 
at  present,  one  characterised  by  a  delicate, 
refined  appearance,  with  oval  face,  rather 
oblique  eyes,  slightly  Roman  nose,  and  a 
frame  not  vigorous  yet  well  proportioned; 
the  other  marked  out  by  broader  face,  pro- 
jecting cheek  bones,  flat  nose,  and  horizontal 
eyes,  while  the  body  is  more  robust  and  mus- 
cular, though  not  so  well  proportioned  and 
regular.  The  former  is  to  be  met  with 
among  the  better  classes  and  in  the  southern 
parts  of  Japan,  while  the  specimens  of  the 
latter  are  found  rather  among  the  labouring 
population,  and  are  more  abundant  in  the 
northern  provinces.  This  difference  of 
types,  aristocratic  and  plebeian,  which  is  still 
more  conspicuous  among  the  fair  sex,  is  with 
good  reason  attributed  to  the  two-fold  wave 
of  Mongolian  emigration  which  reached  our 
island  in  prehistoric  times.  The  first  emi- 
grants, consisting  of  coarser  tribes  of  the 
Mongolian  race,  landed  most  probably  on  the 
northern  coast  of  the  main  island  somewhere 
in  the  present  Idzumo  province,  and  settled 
down  there,  while  the  second  wave  broke  on 
the  shores  of  Kyushu.     These  emigrants 


28        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

seem  to  have  belonged  to  the  more  refined 
branch  of  the  great  Mongolian  stock.  This 
hypothesis  is  borne  out  by  our  mythology, 
which  divides  itself  into  two  cycles,  one  cen- 
tring at  Idzumo  and  the  other  at  Kyushu, 
and  which  tell  us  how  the  great-grandfather 
of  the  first  great  emperor  Jimmu  descended 
from  heaven  on  to  the  peak  of  the  mountain 
Takachiho  in  Hyuga  in  Kyushu.  Accom- 
panied by  his  brother,  he  started  from  this 
spot  on  his  march  of  conquering  migration 
to  Yamato,  fighting  and  subduing  on  his  way 
tribes  who  on  the  continent  were  once  his  kith 
and  kin. 

It  might  perhaps  interest  you  to  know 
something  of  our  prevailing  idea  of  personal 
beauty,  especially  as,  in  such  a  homogeneous 
nation  as  the  Japanese,  ruled  from  time  im- 
memorial by  one  and  the  same  line  of  dyn- 
asty, it  may  help  us  to  make  some  vague  con- 
jectures as  to  the  physical  appearances  of  at 
least  one  of  those  continental  tribe.-  out  of 
which  our  nation  has  been  formed.  The 
standard  of  beauty  naturally  fluctuates  a  lit- 
tle according  to  sex  and  locality.  In  a  lady, 
for  example,  mildness  and  grace  are,  gener- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        29 

ally  speaking,  preferred  to  that  strength  or 
manliness  of  expression  which  would  be 
thought  more  becoming  in  her  brother. 
Tokyo  again  does  not  put  so  much  stress  on 
the  fleshiness  of  limbs  and  face  as  does 
Kyoto.  But,  as  a  whole,  there  is  only  one 
ideal  throughout  the  Empire.  So  let  me  try 
to  enumerate  all  the  qualities  usually  con- 
sidered necessary  to  make  a  beautiful  wom- 
an. She  is  to  possess  a  body  not  much  ex- 
ceeding five  feet  in  height,  with  compara- 
tively fair  skin  and  proportionately  well- 
developed  limbs;  a  head  covered  with  long, 
thick,  and  jet-black  hair;  an  oval  face  with  a 
straight  nose,  high  and  narrow ;  rather  large 
eyes,  with  large  deep-brown  pupils  and  thick 
eyelashes;  a  small  mouth,  hiding  behind  its 
red,  but  not  thin,  lips  even  rows  of  small 
white  teeth;  ears  not  altogether  small;  and 
long  and  thick  eyebrows  forming  two  hori- 
zontal but  slightly  curved  lines,  with  a  space 
left  between  them  and  the  eyes.  Of  the  four 
ways  in  which  hair  can  grow  round  the  up- 
per edge  of  the  forehead,  viz.,  horned, 
square,  round,  and  Fuji-shaped,  one  of  the 
last  two  is  preferred,  a  very  high  as  well  as 


30        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

a  very  low  forehead  being  considered  not 
attractive. 

Such  are,  roughly  speaking,  the  elements 
of  Japanese  female  beauty.  Eyes  and  eye- 
brows with  the  outer  ends  turning  consider- 
ably upwards,  with  which  your  artists  depict 
us,  are  due  to  those  Japanese  colour  prints 
which  strongly  accentuate  our  dislike  of  the 
reverse,  for  straight  eyes  and  eyebrows  make 
a  very  bad  impression  on  us,  suggesting 
weakness,  lasciviousness,  and  so  on.  It  must 
also  be  understood  that  in  Japan  no  such  va- 
riety of  types  of  beauty  is  to  be  met  with  as 
is  noticed  here  in  Europe.  Blue  eyes  and 
blond  hair,  the  charms  of  which  we  first 
learn  to  feel  after  a  protracted  stay  among 
you,  are  regarded  in  a  Japanese  as  something 
extraordinary  in  no  favourable  sense  of  the 
term !  A  girl  with  even  a  slight  tendency  to 
grey  eyes  or  frizzly  hair  is  looked  upon  as  an 
unwelcome  deviation  from  the  national  type. 

If  we  now  consider  our  mythology,  with  a 
view  to  tracing  the  continental  home  of  the 
Yamato  race,  we  find,  to  our  disappointment, 
that  our  present  knowledge  is  too  scanty  to 
allow  us  to  arrive  at  a  conclusion.     Indeed, 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        31 

so  long  as  the  general  science  of  mythology 
itself  remains  in  that  unsettled  condition  in 
which  its  youth  obliges  it  to  linger,  and  es- 
pecially so  long  as  the  Indian  and  Chinese 
bodies  of  myths — by  which  our  mythology 
is  so  unmistakably  influenced — do  not  re- 
ceive more  serious  systematic  treatment,  the 
recorded  stories  of  the  Japanese  deities  can- 
not be  expected  to  supply  us  with  much  indi- 
cation as  to  our  continental  home.  One  thing 
is  certain  about  them,  that  they  were  not  free 
from  influences  exerted  by  the  different 
myths  prevalent  among  the  Chinese  and  the 
Indians  at  the  time  when  they  were  written 
down  in  our  earliest  history,  the  Ko-ji-ki  or 
Records  of  Ancient  Matter,  completed  in 
a.d.  712.  There  is  an  excellent  English  trans- 
lation of  the  book,  with  an  admirable  intro- 
duction and  notes,  by  Mr.  B.  H.  Chamber- 
lain. According  to  this  book,  the  original 
ethereal  chaos  with  which  the  world  began 
gradually  congealed,  and  was  finally  divided 
into  heaven  and  earth.  The  male  and  female 
principles  now  at  work  gave  birth  to  several 
deities,  until  a  pair  of  deities  named  Izanagi 
and  Izanami,  or  the  '  Male-who-invites  '  and 


32        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT, 

the  '  Female-who-invites/  were  produced. 
They  married,  and  produced  first  of  all  the 
islands  of  Japan  big  and  small,  and  then  dif- 
ferent deities,  until  the  birth  of  the  Fire-God 
cost  the  divine  mother  her  life.  She  subse- 
quently retired  to  the  Land  of  Darkness  or 
Hades,  where  her  sorrowful  consort  de- 
scended, Orpheus-like,  in  quest  of  his  spouse. 
He  failed  to  bring  her  back  to  the  outer 
world,  for,  like  the  Greek  musician,  he  broke 
his  promise  not  to  look  at  her  in  her  more 
profound  retirement.  The  result  was  disas- 
trous. Izanagi  barely  escaped  from  his  now 
furious  wife,  and  on  coming  back  to  daylight 
he  washed  himself  in  a  stream,  in  order  to 
purify  himself  from  the  hideous  sights  and 
the  pollution  of  the  nether-world.  This  cus- 
tom of  lustration  is,  by  the  way,  kept  up  to 
this  day  in  the  symbolic  sprinkling  of  salt 
over  persons  returning  from  a  funeral — salt 
representing  pure  water,  as  our  name  for  it, 
*  the  flower  of  the  waves,'  well  indicates.  Our 
love  of  cleanliness  and  of  bathing  might  be 
also  recognised  in  this  early  custom.  Impur- 
ity, whether  mental  or  ccvporal,  has  always 
been  regarded  as  a  great  evil,  and  even  as  a  sin. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        33 

Now  one  of  the  most  important  results  of 
the  purification  of  the  god  Izanagi  was  the 
birth  of  three  important  deities  through  the 
washing  of  his  eyes  and  nose.  The  Moon- 
God  and  the  Sun-Goddess  emerged  from  his 
washing  his  right  and  left  eyes,  while  Su- 
sanowo,  their  youngest  brother,  owed  his  ex- 
istence to  the  washing  of  his  nose;  three  il- 
lustrious children  to  whom  the  divine 
father  trusted  the  dominion  of  night,  day, 
and  the  seas. 

The  last-mentioned  deity,  whose  name 
would  mean  in  English  '  Prince  Impetuous/ 
lost  his  father's  favour  by  his  obstinate  long- 
ing to  see  Izanami,  the  divine  mother,  in 
Hades,  and  was  expelled  from  the  father's 
presence.  He  eventually  went  up  to  heaven 
to  pay  a  visit  to  his  sister,  the  Sun-Goddess, 
whom  he  gravely  offended  by  his  monstrous 
outrages  on  her  person,  and  who  was  conse- 
quently so  angry  that  she  shut  herself  up  in  a 
rocky  chamber,  thus  causing  darkness  in  the 
world  outside.  In  accordance  with  the  de- 
liberate plans  worked  out  by  an  assembly  of 
a  myriad  gods,  she  was  at  last  allured  from 

her  cavern  by  the  sounds  of  wild  merriment 
c 


34        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

caused  by  the  burlesque  dancing  of  a  female 
deity,  and  day  reigned  once  more. 

The  now  repenting  offender  was  driven 
down  from  heaven,  and  he  wandered  about 
the  earth.  It  was  during  this  wandering  that 
in  Idzumo  he,  like  Perseus,  rescued  a  beauti- 
ful young  maid  from  an  eight-headed  ser- 
pent. He  won  her  hand  and  lived  very  hap- 
pily with  her  ever  after. 

In  the  meantime  the  state  of  things  in  the 
'  High  Plain  of  Heaven '  ripened  to  the 
point  that  the  Sun-Goddess  began  to  think 
of  sending  her  august  child  to  govern  the 
'  Luxuriant-Reed-Plain-Land-of-Fresh-Rice- 
Ears/  that  is  to  say,  Japan.  Messages  were 
previously  sent  to  pacify  the  land  for  the  re- 
ception of  the  divine  ruler.  This  took  much 
time,  during  which  a  grandson  was  born  to 
the  Sun-Goddess,  and  in  the  end  it  was  this 
grandson  who  was  designated  to  come  down 
to  earth  instead  of  his  father.  On  his  de- 
parture a  formal  command  to  descend  and 
rule  the  land  now  placed  under  his  care  was 
accompanied  by  the  present  of  a  mirror,  a 
sword,  and  a  string  of  crescent-shaped  jew- 
els.   These  treasures,  still  preserved  in  our 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        35 

imperial  household  as  regalia,  are  generally 
interpreted  to  mean  the  three  virtues  of  wis- 
dom, courage,  and  mercy — necessary  quali- 
ties for  a  perfect  ruler.  It  was  on  the  high 
peak  of  Mount  Takachiho  that  the  divine 
ruler  descended  to  earth.  He  settled  down  in 
the  country  until  his  great-grandson,  known 
in  history  as  Emperor  Jimmu,  founded  the 
empire  and  began  that  unique  line  of  rulers 
who  have  governed  the  '  Land  of  the  Gods  ' 
for  more  than  two  thousand  years,  the  pres- 
ent emperor  being  the  hundred  and  twenty- 
first  link  in  the  eternal  chain. 

Such  is,  in  brief,  the  story  about  my  coun- 
try before  it  was  brought  under  the  rule  of 
one  central  governing  body.  Subjected  to 
scientific  scrutiny  the  whole  tale  presents 
many  gaps  in  logical  sequence.  It  betrays, 
besides,  traces  of  an  intermingling  of  the 
early  beliefs  of  other  nations.  Still,  it  must 
be  said  that  the  divine  origin  of  our  emperors 
has  invested  their  throne  with  the  double  halo 
of  temporal  and  of  spiritual  power  from  the 
earliest  days  of  their  ascendancy;  and  the 
people,  themselves  the  descendants  of  those 
patriarchs  who  served  under  the  banners  of 


36        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

Emperor  Jimmu,  or  else  of  those  who  early 
learned  to-  bow  themselves  down  before  the 
divine  conqueror,  have  looked  up  to  this 
throne  with  an*  ever-growing  reverence  and 
pride. 

In.  primitive  Japan,  as  in  every  other  prim- 
itive human  society,  ancestor-worship  was 
the  first  form  of  belief.  Each  family  had  its 
own.  departed  spirits  of  forefathers  to  whom 
was  dedicated  a  daily  homage  of  simple 
words  and  offerings  in  kind.  The  guardian 
ghosts  demanded  of  their  living  descendants 
that  they  should  be  good  and  brave  in  their 
own  way.  As  these  families  of  the  same  race 
and  language  gathered  themselves  around 
the  strongest  of  them  all,  imbued  with  a  firm 
belief  in  its  divine  origin,  they  contributed  in 
their  turn  their  own  myths  to  the  imperial 
Jones,  thrs  eventually  forming  and  consolidat- 
ing a  national  cult;  and  it  was  but  natural 
that  the  people's  heart  should  come  in  course 
of  time  to  re-echo  in  harmony  with  the  key- 
note struck  by  the  one  through  whom  the 
gods  breathe  eternal  life.  The  whole  nation 
is  bound  by  that  sacred  tie  of  common  belief 
and  common  thought.     Here  lies  the  great 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        37 

gap  that  separates,  for  example,  the  Chinese 
cult  of  fatalism  from  our  Path  of  Gods  as  a 
moral  force.  The  Chinese  have  believed 
from  the  earliest  times  in  one  supreme  god 
whom  they  called  the  Divine  Presider 
(Shang-ti)  or  the  August  Heaven  (Hwang- 
fien  or  simply  T'ien),  who,  according  to 
their  notion,  carefully  selects  a  fit  person 
from  among  swarming  mankind  to  be  the 
temporary  ruler  of  his  fellow-countrymen, 
but  only  for  so  long  as  it  pleases  the  god  to 
let  him  occupy  the  throne.  At  the  expiration 
of  a  certain  period,  the  heavenly  mission 
(Vien-ming)  is  transferred  through  blood- 
shed and  national  disaster  to  another  mor- 
tal, who  exercises  the  earthly  rule  until  he 
or  his  descendants  incur  the  disfavour  of  the 
'  Heaven  above/  To  this  day  the  Chinese 
word  for  revolution  means  the  *  renovation 
of  missions  '  (kweh-ming).  This  fatalistic 
idea,  which  is  but  a  natural  outcome  of  the 
almost  too  democratic  nature  of  the  people 
of  the  Celestial  Empire  and  of  the  frequent 
changes  of  dynasties  it  has  had  to  go 
through,  is  almost  unknown  in  our  island 
home  in  its  gravest  aspects ;  more  than  that, 


38        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

ever  since  its  introduction  into  Japan,  this 
idea,  along  with  the  Indian  doctrine  of  piti- 
less fate,  has  gradually  taught  us  to  offer  a 
more  resigned  and  determined  service  to  our 
respective  superiors  who  culminate  in  the 
divine  person  of  the  Emperor  himself.  This 
is  well  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  no  attempt 
at  the  formal  occupation  of  the  throne  has 
ever  been  made,  even  on  the  part  of  those 
powerful  Shoguns  who  were  the  real  rulers 
of  our  country;  they  knew  full  well  how  dan- 
gerous and  fatal  for  themselves  it  would  be 
to  tamper  with  that  hinge  on  which  the  na- 
tion's religious  life  turns.  Only  once  in  our 
long  history  is  there  an  example  of  an  unsuc- 
cessful attempt  (and  it  is  the  highest  treason 
a  Japanese  subject  can  think  of),  when  a 
Buddhist  monk  named  Dokyo,  encouraged 
by  the  undue  devotion  of  the  ruling  empress, 
tried  to  ascend  the  throne  by  means  of  the 
recognition  of  the  higher  temporal  rank  of 
the  Buddhist  priesthood  over  the  imperial 
ministry  of  the  native  cult.  This  imminent 
danger  was  averted  by  the  bold  and  resolute 
patriotism  of  a  Shinto  priest,  Wake-no-Kiyo- 
maro,  who,  in  Luther-like  defiance  of  all  peril 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        39 

and  personal  risks,  declared  fearlessly,  in  the 
very  presence  of  the  haughty  and  menacing 
head  of  the  Buddhist  Church,  the  divine  will, 
1  Japan  is  to  know  no  emperor  except  in  the 
person  of  the  divine  descendants  of  the  Sun- 
Goddess  ! ' 

Turning  now  to  the  question  of  language, 
we  must  confess  that  the  linguistic  affinities 
of  Japanese  are  as  little  cleared  up  as  the 
other  problems  we  have  been  considering. 
The  only  thing  we  know  about  the  Japanese 
language  amounts  to  this:  it  belongs,  mor- 
phologically speaking,  to  the  so-called  agglu- 
tinative languages,  e.g.,  those  which  express 
their  grammatical  functions  by  the  addition 
of  etymological ly  independent  elements — 
prefixes  and  suffixes — to  the  unchangeable 
roots  or  base  forms.  Genealogically,  to  fol« 
low  the  classification  expounded  by  Friedrich 
Miiller  in  his  Grundriss  der  Sprachwissen- 
schaft,  who  based  his  system  on  Haeckel's 
division  of  the  human  race  by  the  nature  and 
particularly  the  section  of  the  hair,  Japanese 
is  one  of  the  languages  or  groups  of  lan- 
guages spoken  by  the  Mongolian  race. 

But  this  characterisation  of  our  tongue 


4o        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

does  not  help  us  much.  One  could  as  well 
point  to  the  East  at  large  to  show  where  Ja- 
pan lies!  Notwithstanding  the  general  un- 
certainty as  regards  the  exact  position  of  our 
language,  this  much  is  sure,  that  Japanese 
has,  in  spite  of  the  immense  number  of  loan- 
words of  Chinese  origin,  no  fundamental 
connection  with  the  monosyllabic  language 
of  China,  whose  different  syntactical  nature 
and  want  of  common  roots  baffles  the  at- 
tempts on  the  part  of  some  speculative  Euro- 
peans to  connect  it  with  our  own  tongue.  At 
the  same  time,  it  is  well  known  among  com- 
petent scholars  that  Japanese,  with  its  most 
distant  dialect  Luchuan,  bears  great  kinship 
to  the  Corean,  Manchurian,  and  Mongolian 
languages.  It  shares  with  them,  besides  the 
dislike  of  commencing  a  word  with  a  trilled 
sound  or  with  a  sonant,  almost  the  same 
rules  for  the  arrangement  of  the  component 
elements  of  a  sentence.  According  to  the 
Japanese  syntax,  the  following  rules  can,  for 
instance,  be  applied  to  Corean  without  al- 
teration : — 

I.  All  the  qualifying  words  and  phrases 
are  put  before  those  they  qualify.  At- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        41 

tributive  adjectives  and  adverbs,  and 
their  equivalents,  are  placed  before 
nouns  and  verbs  they  modify. 

2.  The  grammatical  subject  stands  at  the 

beginning  of  the  sentence. 

3.  Predicative  elements  are  at  the  end  of  a 

sentence. 

4.  Direct  and  indirect  objects  follow  the 

subject. 

5.  Subordinate  sentences  precede  the  prin- 

cipal ones. 

One  thing  worthy  of  notice  is  the  fact  that, 
notwithstanding  the  most  convincing  struc- 
tural similarity  that  exists  between  these 
affiliated  languages,  they  contain,  compara- 
tively speaking,  few  words  in  common,  even 
among  the  numerals  and  personal  pronouns, 
which  have  played  such  an  important  part 
in  Indo-European  philology.  We  must  still 
wait  a  long  time  before  a  better  knowledge 
of  linguistic  affinity  reveals  such  decisive 
links  of  connection  as  will  enable  us  to  trace 
our  Japanese  home  on  the  continent. 

Let  us  now  consider  what  were  the  effects 
of  the  continental  civilisation  on  the  mental 


^ 


42        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

development  of  the  Japanese  within  their  in- 
sular home. 

Before  entering  into  details  about  the  vari- 
ous continental  doctrines  implanted  in  our 
country  from  China  and  India,  it  may  be 
well  to  tell  you  something  of  the  mental  at- 
titude of  the  Japanese  in  facing  a  new  form 
of  culture,  in  many  senses  far  superior  to 
their  own.  Nothing  definite  can  perhaps  be 
said  about  it ;  but  when  we  grope  along  the 
main  cord  of  historical  phenomena  we  think 
we  find  that  the  Japanese  as  a  whole  are  not 
a  people  with  much  aptitude  for  deep  .meta- 
physical ways  of  thinking.  They  are  not  of 
the  calibre  from  which  you  expect  a  Kant  or 
a  Schopenhauer.  Warlike  by  nature  more 
than  anything  else,  they  have  been  known 
from  the  very  beginning  to  have  had  the 
soldier-like  simplicity  and  the  easy  content- 
ment of  men  of  action — qualities  which  the 
practical  nature  of  Confucian  ethics  had  am- 
ple chance  to  develop.  The  abstruse  concep- 
tions of  Chinese  or  Indian  origin  have  been 
received  into  the  Japanese  mind  just  as  they 
were  preached,  and  usually  we  have  not  trou- 
bled ourselves  to  think  them  out  again ;  but 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        43 

in  accordance  with  our  peculiarly  quick  habit 
of  perceiving  the  inner  meaning  of  things, 
we  have  generalised  them  straight  away  and 
turned  them  immediately  into  so  many  work- 
ing principles.  There  are  any  number  of  in- 
stances of  slight  hints  given  by  some  people 
on  the  continent  and  worked  out  to  suit  our 
own  purposes  into  maxims  of  immediate  and 
practical  value.  Ideals  in  their  original 
home  are  ideals  no  longer  in  our  island  home. 
They  are  interpreted  into  so  many  realities 
with  a  direct  bearing  on  our  daily  life.  We 
have  been  and  are,  even  to  this  day,  always 
in  need  of  some  new  hints  and  suggestions 
to  work  up  into  so  many  dynamic  forces  for 
practical  use.  Upon  Europe  and  America 
the  full  power  of  our  mental  searchlight  is 
now  playing,  in  quest  of  those  new  ideas  for 
future  development  for  which  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  draw  mainly  on  China  and 
India.  Even  such  a  commonplace  thing  as 
the  drinking  of  a  cup  of  tea  becomes  in  our 
hands  something  more :  it  becomes  a  training 
in  stoic  serenity,  in  the  capacity  of  smiling 
at  life's  troubles  and  disturbances.  Some 
day  you  might  learn  from  us  a  new  philoso- 


44        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

phy  based  on  the  use  of  motor  cars  and  tele- 
phones as  applied  to  life  and  conduct! 

This,  as  you  will  see,  explains  why  we 
have  failed  to  produce  any  original  thinkers ; 
this  is  why  we  have  to  recognise  our  indebt- 
edness for  almost  all  the  important  ideas 
which  have  brought  about  social  inno- 
vation either  to  China  or  to  India,  or  else  to 
the  modern  Western  nations;  and  this  not- 
withstanding so  many  national  idiosyncra- 
sies and  characteristics  which  are  to  be  found 
in  the  productions  of  our  art  and  in  our  life 
and  ways,  and  which  are  even  as  handfuls  of 
grain  gathered  in  foreign  fields  and  brewed 
into  a  national  drink  of  utterly  Japanese  fla- 
vour. We  are,  I  think,  a  people  of  the  Pres- 
ent and  the  Tangible,  of  the  broad  Daylight 
and  the  plainly  Visible.  The  undeniable  pro- 
clivity of  our  mind  in  favour  of  determina- 
tion and  action,  as  contrasted  with  delibera- 
tion and  calm,  makes  it  an  uncongenial 
ground  for  the  sublimity  and  grandeur  of 
that  '  loathed  melancholy,  of  Cerberus  and 
blackest  midnight  born/  to  take  deep  root  in 
it.  Pure  reasoning  as  such  has  had  for  us 
little  value  beyond  the  help  it  affords  us  in 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        45 

harbouring  our  drifting  thought  in  some 
nearest  port,  where  we  can  follow  any  peace- 
ful occupation  rather  than  be  fighting  what 
we  should  call  a  useless  fight  with  troubled 
billows  and  unfathomable  depths.  Such,  ac- 
cording to  my  personal  view,  are  the  facts 
about  our  mentality  considered  generally. 
And  now  it  is  necessary  to  speak  of  the  main 
waves  of  cult  and  culture  that  successively 
washed  our  shores. 

The  first  mention  in  our  history  of  the  in- 
troduction of  the  Chinese  learning  into  the 
imperial  household  places  it  in  the  reign  of 
the  fifteenth  emperor  O-jin,  in  the  year  284 
after  Christ  according  to  the  earliest  native 
records,  but  according  to  more  trustworthy 
recent  computation  1  considerably  later  than 
that  date.  We  are  told  that  a  certain  prince 
was  put  under  the  tutorship  of  a  learned  Co- 
rean  scholar  of  Chinese,  who,  at  the  request 
of  the  emperor,  came  over  to  Japan  with  the 
Confucian  Analects  (Iun-yii)  and  some 
other  Chinese  classics  as  a  tribute  from  the 
King  of  Kudara.  But  long  before  the  learn- 
ing of  the  Celestial  Empire  found  its  way 
1  Cp.  Bramsen's  Japanese  Chronological  Tables. 


46         THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

through  Corea  into  our  imperial  court,  it  had 
in  all  probability  been  making  its  silent  in- 
fluence felt  here  and  there  among  the  Japan- 
ese people.  Great  swarms  of  immigrants 
had  sought  a  final  place  of  rest  in  our  sea- 
girt country  from  many  parts  of  China, 
where  raging  tyranny  and  menacing  despot- 
ism made  life  intolerable  even  for  Chinese 
meekness ;  these,  and  the  bands  of  daring  in- 
vaders which  Japan  sent  out  from  time  to 
time  to  the  Corean  and  Chinese  coasts,  had 
given  us  many  opportunities  of  coming  into 
contact  with  the  learning  prevalent  among 
our  continental  neighbours.  In  this  manner 
Chinese  literature,  with  its  groundwork  of 
Confucian  ethics,  surrounded  by  the  strange 
lore  derived  from  Taoism,  and  perhaps  also 
from  Hindu  sources,  had  been  gradually  but 
surely  attracting  the  ever-increasing  atten- 
tion of  our  warlike  forefathers,  who  were  to 
become  in  course  of  time  its  devoted  ad- 
mirers. 

Now,  Confucianism  pure  and  simple,  as 
taught  by  the  sage  Kung-foo-tsze  (551-478 
B.C.),  from  whom  the  doctrine  derived  its 
name,  was,  notwithstanding  the  contention 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        47 

of  the  famous  English  sinologue  Dr.  Legge, 
nothing  more  and  nothing  less  than  an  ag- 
gregate of  ethical  ideas  considered  in  their 
application  to  the  conduct  and  duties  of  our 
everyday  life.  The  great  teacher  never  al- 
lowed himself  to  be  considered  an  expounder 
of  any  new  system  of  either  religious  or 
metaphysical  ideas.  He  was  content  to  call 
himself  '  a  transmitter  and  not  a  maker,  be- 
lieving in  and  loving  the  ancients.'  True  to 
the  spirit  of  these  words,  and  most  probably 
having  no  other  course  open  to  him  on  ac- 
count of  his  extremely  utilitarian  turn  of 
mind,  he  devoted  his  whole  life  to  the  eluci- 
dation of  the  True  Path  of  human  life,  as  ex- 
emplified by  those  half-mythical  rulers  of  old 
China,  Yao,  Shun,  etc.,  from  whom  he  de- 
rived his  ideals  and  his  images  of  perfect 
man  in  flesh  and  blood.  These  early  kings 
were  of  course  no  creation  of  Confucius  him- 
self;  the  only  thing  he  did  was  to  place  the 
forms,  which  popular  tradition  had  handed 
down  surrounded  by  legendary  halos,  in  high 
relief  before  the  people,  as  perfect  models  to 
regulate  the  earthly  conduct  of  the  individ- 
uals as  members  of  a  society.     His  attitude 


48        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

towards  the  ancient  classics  which  he  com- 
piled and  perpetuated  was  that  of  one  trans- 
mitting faithfully.  He  studied  them,  and 
exhorted  and  helped  his  disciples  to  do  the 
same,  but  he  did  not  alter  them,  nor  even  di- 
gest them  into  their  present  form.'  x  In  or- 
der to  find  concrete  examples  to  show  his 
ethical  views  more  positively,  he  wrote  a  his- 
tory of  his  native  state  Loo  from  722  to  484 
B.C.,  in  which,  while  faithfully  recording 
events,  he  took  every  opportunity  to  jot  down 
his  moral  judgment  upon  them  in  the  terse 
words  and  phrases  he  knew  so  well  how  to 
wield.  As  abstract  reasoning  had  little 
charm  for  his  practical  mind,  he  systemati- 
cally avoided  indulging  in  discussions  of  a 
metaphysical  nature.  '  How  can  we  know 
anything  of  an  After-life,  when  we  are  so  ig- 
norant even  of  the  Living/  was  his  answer 
when  asked  by  one  of  his  disciples  about 
Death.  Ancestor-worship  he  sanctioned,  as 
might  naturally  be  expected  from  his  enthus- 
iastic advocacy  of  things  ancient,  and  also 
from  the  importance  he  attached  to  filial 
piety,  which  strikes  the  keynote  of  his  ethi- 
1  Legge's  The  Religion  of  China,  p.  137. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        49 

cal  ideas.  But  here  too  his  indifference  to  the 
spiritual  side  of  the  question  is  very  remark- 
able. Perhaps  he  found  the  holy  altar  of  his 
day  so  much  encumbered  by  the  presence  of 
innumerable  fetishes  and  demons,  that  he 
felt  little  inclination  to  approach  and  sweep 
them  away.  '  To  give  oneself/  he  said  on 
one  occasion,  '  to  the  duties  due  to  men,  and 
while  respecting  spiritual  things  to  keep 
aloof  from  them,  may  be  called  wisdom.' 

The  main  features  which  he  advocated  are 
found  well  reflected  in  the  first  twelve  out  of 
sixteen  articles  of  the  so-called  sacred  Edict, 
published  by  the  famous  K'ang  Hsi  (1654- 
1722),  the  second  emperor  of  the  present 
Manchu  dynasty,  in  1670  a.d.,  which  em- 
body the  essential  points  of  Confucianism, 
as  adapted  to  the  requirements  of  modern 
everyday  Chinese  life.  * 

1.  Esteem   most   highly  filial   piety   and 

brotherly  submission,  in  order  to  give 
due  prominence  to  the  social  relations. 

2.  Behave  with  generosity  to  the  branches 
of  your  kindred,  in  order  to  illustrate 
harmony  and  benignity. 

3.  Cultivate  peace  and  concord  in  your 


50        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

neighbourhood,  in  order  to  prevent 
quarrels  and  litigation. 

4.  Recognise  the  importance  of  husban- 
dry and  the  culture  of  the  mulberry- 
tree,  in  order  to  ensure  sufficiency  of 
food  and  clothing. 

J.  Show  that  you  prize  moderation  and 
economy,  in  order  to  prevent  the  lav- 
ish waste  of  your  means. 

6.  Make  much  of  the  colleges  and  semi- 

naries, in  order  to  make  correct  the 
practice  of  the  scholars. 

7.  Discountenance    and    banish    strange 

doctrines,  in  order  to  exalt  correct 
doctrines. 

8.  Describe  and  explain  the  laws,  in  order 

to  warn  the  ignorant  and  obstinate. 

9.  Exhibit   clearly   propriety   and   gentle 

courtesy,  in  order  to  improve  manners 
and  customs. 

to.  Labour  diligently  at  your  proper  call- 
ings, in  order  to  give  well-defined 
aims  to  the  people. 

11.  Instruct  sons  and  younger  brothers,  in 
order  to  prevent  them  doing  what  is 
wrong. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        51 

12.  Put  a  stop  to  false  accusations,  in  order 

to  protect  the  honest  and  the  good. 
Here  too  you  see  what  an  important  place 
filial  piety  occupies,  which  Confucius  him- 
self prized  so  highly.  The  Hsiao  King,  or 
the  '  Sacred  Book  of  Filial  Piety,'  which  is 
supposed  to  record  conversations  held  be- 
tween Confucius  and  his  disciple  Tsang  Ts'an 
on  that  weighty  subject,  has  the  following 
passage:  'He  who  (properly)  serves  his 
parents  in  a  high  situation  will  be  free  from 
haughtiness;  in  a  low  situation  he  will  be 
free  from  insubordination;  whilst  among 
his  equals  he  will  not  be  quarrelsome.  In  a 
high  position  haughtiness  leads  to  ruin; 
among  the  lowly  insubordination  means  pun- 
ishment; among  equals  quarrelsomeness 
tends  to  the  wielding  of  weapons/  These 
words,  naive  as  they  are,  express  the  exalted 
position  filial  affection  occupies  in  the  eyes 
of  Confucianism.  '  Dutiful  subjects  are  to 
be  found  in  the  persons  of  filial  sons/  and 
again,  '  Filial  piety  is  the  source  whence  all 
other  good  actions  take  their  rise/  are  other 
vSayings  expressing  its  importance. 

Along  with  this  virtue,  other  forms  of 


52        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

moral  force,  such  as  mercy,  uprightness, 
courage,  politeness,  fidelity,  and  loyalty, 
have  been  duly  considered  and  commended 
by  the  great  teacher  himself  and  his  disciples. 
Among  these,  Mencius  (373-289  B.C.)  is 
most  enterprising  and  attractive,  digesting 
and  systematising  with  a  great  deal  of  phil- 
osophic talent  the  rather  fragmentary  ideas 
of  his  great  master.  It  is  he  who,  among 
other  things,  informs  us,  on  the  assumed  au- 
thority of  a  passage  in  the  Shu-King,  how 
the  sage  Shun  made  it  a  subject  of  his  anx- 
ious solicitude  to  teach  the  five  constituent  re- 
lationships of  society,  viz.,  affection  between 
father  and  son ;  relations  of  righteousness  be- 
tween ruler  and  subject;  the  assigning  of 
their  proper  spheres  to  husband  and  wife; 
distinction  of  precedence  between  old  and 
young;  and  fidelity  between  friend  and 
friend — an  idea  which  has  played  such  an 
important  part  in  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Oriental  mind. 

Such  were  the  main  features  of  Confu- 
cianism when  it  first  reached  Japan,  some 
centuries  after  the  Christian  era.  But  it  was 
not  until  some  time  after  the  introduction  of 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        53 

Buddhism  from  Corea  during  the  reign  of 
the  Emperor  Kimmei,  in  552  a.d.,  that  Con- 
fucianism and  Chinese  learning  began  to  take 
firm  root  and  make  their  influence  felt  among 
us.  Paradoxical  as  it  looks,  it  is  Buddhism 
that  so  greatly  helped  the  teaching  of  the 
Chinese  sage  to  establish  itself  as  a  ruling 
factor  in  Japanese  society.  This  curious 
state  of  things  came  about  in  this  way.  Tha 
gospel  of  Shakya-muni  has,  ever  since  its  in- 
troduction into  our  country,  been  made  ac- 
cessible only  through  the  Chinese  transla- 
tion, which  demanded  a  considerable  knowl- 
edge of  the  written  language  of  the  Middle 
Kingdom.  The  keen  and  far-reaching  spir- 
itual interest  aroused  by  Buddhism  gave  a 
fresh  and  vigorous  impulse  to  the  study  of 
Chinese  literature,  already  increasingly 
cultivated  for  some  centuries.  Now,  the 
knowledge  of  Chinese  in  its  written  form 
has,  until  quite  recently,  always  been  im- 
parted by  a  painful  perusal  of  the  Chinese 
classics  and  Chinese  books  deeply  imbued 
with  Confucianism.  It  was  only  after  a 
considerable  amount  of  knowledge  of  this 
difficult  language  had  been  obtained  in  this 


54        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

unnatural  way,  that  one  came  in  contact  with 
the  works  of  authors  not  strictly  orthodox. 
This  way  of  teaching  Chinese  through  Con- 
fucian texts,  which  we  adopted  from  China's 
faithful  agent,  Corea,  necessarily  led  from 
the  very  beginning  to  an  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  the  main  aspects  of  the  Confucian 
morals  in  our  upper  classes,  among  whom 
alone  the  study  was  at  first  pursued  with  any 
seriousness.  Although  skilled  in  warlike 
arts,  gentle  and  loyal  in  domestic  life,  our 
forefathers  were  simple  in  manners  and 
thought  in  those  olden  days  when  book- 
learned  reasons  of  duty  had  not  yet  super- 
seded the  naive  observance  of  the  dictates  of 
the  heart  and  of  responsibility  to  the  ances- 
tral spirits.  They  possessed  no  letters  of 
their  own,  and  consequently  no  literature, 
except  in  unwritten  songs  and  legendary  lore 
sung  from  mouth  to  mouth,  telling  of  the 
gods  and  men  who  formed  the  glorious  past 
of  the  Yamato  race.  So  it  is  not  difficult  to 
imagine  the  dazzling  effect  which  the  Chi- 
nese learning,  with  its  richness  and  its 
pedantry,  with  its  elaborate  system  of  civil 
government  and  its  philosophy,   produced 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        55 

upon  our  untrained  eyes.  Gradually  but 
steadfastly  it  had  been  gaining  ground,  and 
making  its  slow  way  from  the  topmost  rung 
to  the  bottom  of  the  social  ladder,  when  the 
introduction  of  Buddhism  quickened  the  now 
resistless  progress.  The  would-be  priests 
and  advocates  of  the  Indian  creed  felt  a  fresh 
impulse  and  spiritual  need  to  learn  the  Chi- 
nese language,  for  which  they  had  long 
entertained  a  high  estimation.  Owing  to  the 
extremely  secular  character  of  the  Confucian 
ethics  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  to 
the  fact  that  Buddhists  deny  the  existence  of 
a  personal  god,  and  are  eager  to  minister 
salvation  through  any  adequate  means  so 
long  as  it  does  not  contradict  the  Law  of  the 
Universe  upon  which  the  whole  doctrine  is 
based,  Buddhism  found  in  the  teaching  of  the 
Chinese  sage  and  his  followers  not  only  no 
enemy,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a  helpful  friend. 
It  found  that  the  sacred  books  of  Confu- 
cian doctrine  contained  only  in  a  slightly 
different  form  the  five  commandments 
laid  down  by  Shakya-muni  himself  for 
the  regulation  of  the  conduct  of  a  layman, 
viz. : — 


56        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

1.  Not  to  destroy  life  nor  to  cause  its  de- 

struction. 

2.  Not  to  steal. 

3.  Not  to  commit  adultery. 

4.  Not  to  tell  lies. 

5.  Not  to  indulge  in  intoxicating  drinks; 

or  the  Buddhist  warning  against  the 
ten  sins;  three  of  the  body — taking 
life,  theft,  adultery;  four  of -speech — 
lying,  slander,  abuse,  and  vain  con- 
versation; three  of  the  mind — covet- 
ousness,  malice,  and  scepticism. 
It  saw  also  that  Confucian  writings  em- 
braced its  fifty  precepts  1  detailed  under  the 
five  different  secular  relationships  of 

1.  Parents  and  children. 

2.  Pupils  and  teachers. 

3.  Husbands  and  wives. 

4.  Friends  and  companions. 

5.  Masters  and  servants. 

Our  early  Buddhists  therefore  did  not  see 
why  they  should  try  to  suppress  the  existing 
Confucian  moral  code  and  supplant  it  with 
their  own  which  breathed  the  same  spirit, 

1  Cp.  Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism,  p.  144. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        57 

only  because  it  had  not  grown  on  Indian 
soil. 

Thus  encouraged  by  the  now  influential 
advocates  of  the  teaching  of  Buddha,  them- 
selves admirers  of  the  Chinese  learning,  Con- 
fucianism began  with  renewed  vigour  to 
exercise  a  great  influence  on  the  future  of 
the  Japanese.  This  took  place  during  the 
seventh  century,  when  the  reorganisation  of 
the  Japanese  government  after  the  model  of 
that  of  the  Celestial  Empire  made  our  educa- 
tional system  quite  Chinese.  In  addition  to 
a  university,  there  were  many  provincial 
schools  where  candidates  for  the  government 
service  were  instructed.  Medicine,  mathe- 
matics, including  astronomy  and  law,  taught 
through  Chinese  books,  along  with  the  all- 
important  teaching  in  the  Confucian  ethics 
and  in  Chinese  literature  generally,  were  the 
branches  of  study  cultivated  under  the  guid- 
ance of  professors  whose  calling  had  become 
hereditary  among  a  certain  number  of 
learned  families.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
two  centuries  we  see  several  private  institu- 
tions founded  by  great  nobles  of  the  court, 
with  an  endowment  in  land  for  thoir  support. 


58        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

The  native  system  of  writing  which  had 
gradually  emerged  out  of  the  phonetic  use  of 
Chinese  ideographs  made  it  possible  for  Jap- 
anese thought,  hitherto  expressed  only  in  an 
uncongenial  foreign  garb,  to  appear  in  purely 
Japanese  attire.  Thus  we  find  the  dawn  of 
Japanese  civilisation  appearing  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  tenth  century  after  Christ.  The 
air  was  replete  with  the  Buddhist  thought  of 
after-life  and  the  Confucian  ideas  of  broad- 
day  morality.  The  sonorous  reading  of  the 
Book  of  Filial  Piety  was  heard  all  over  the 
country,  echoing  with  the  loud  recital  of  the 
Myoho-renge-kyo  (or  Saddharma  Pundarika 
Sutra). 

During  the  dark  and  dreary  Middle  Ages 
which  followed  this  golden  period,  and  which 
were  brought  about  by  the  degeneration  of 
the  ruling  nobles  and  by  the  gradually  rising 
power  of  the  military  class,  Chinese  learning 
fled  to  the  protecting  hands  of  Buddhist 
priests;  and  in  its  quiet  refuge  within  the 
monastery  walls  it  continued  to  breathe  its 
humble  existence,  until  it  found  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  sixteenth  century  a  powerful 
patron  in  the  great  founder  of  the  Tokugawa 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        59 

Shogunate.  The  education  of  the  common 
people,  too,  seems  to  have  been  kept  up  by 
the  monks — a  fact  still  preserved  in  the  word 
tera-koya,  *  church  seminary/  a  term  used, 
until  forty  years  ago,  to  express  the  tiny  pri- 
vate schools  for  children.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  education  thus  given  was  al- 
ways of  an  exclusively  secular  character,  bas- 
ing itself  on  the  Confucian  morals. 

Before  passing  on  to  the  consideration  of 
Laoism,  let  me  say  something  about  the  so- 
called  orthodox  form  of  the  teaching  of  Con- 
fucius, which  is  one  of  the  latest  develop- 
ments of  that  doctrine.  Orthodox  Confu- 
cianism, as  represented  by  the  famous  Chi- 
nese philosopher  and  commentator  of  the 
Confucian  canon,  Chu-Hsi  (1 130-1200), 
found  its  admirer  in  a  Japanese  scholar,  Fu- 
ji wara-no-Seigwa  (1560- 1 6 19),  who  in  his 
youth  had  joined  the  priesthood,  which  how- 
ever he  afterwards  renounced.  He  gave  lec- 
tures on  the  Chinese  classics  at  Kyoto.  He 
was  held  in  great  esteem  by  Tokugawa 
Iyeyasu,  the  founder  of  the  Tokugawa  line 
of  Shoguns,  who  embraced  the  Chinese  sys- 
tem of  ethics  as  preached  by  Chu-Hsi.    Dur- 


60        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

ing  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  the 
Tokugawa  rule,  this  system,  under  the 
hereditary  direction  of  the  descendants  of 
Hayashi  Razan  (i 583-1657),  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  disciples  of  Seigwa,  was 
recognised  as  the  established  doctrine. 

According  to  the  somewhat  hazy  ideas  of 
Chu-Hsi's  philosophy,  which  I  ask  your  per- 
mission to  sketch  here  on  account  of  the  high 
public  esteem  in  which  we  have  held  them 
for  the  last  three  centuries,  the  ultimate  basis 
of  the  universe  is  Infinity,  or  Tai  Kieh, 
which,  though  containing  within  itself  all  the 
germs  of  all  forms  of  existence  and  excel- 
lence, is  utterly  void  of  form  or  sensible  qual- 
ities. It  consists  of  two  qualities,  li  and  chi, 
which  may  be  roughly  rendered  into  l  force- 
element  '  and  *  matter-element/  These  are 
self-existences,  are  present  in  all  things,  and 
are  found  in  their  formation.  The  '  force- 
element/  or  li,  we  are  told,  is  the  perfection 
of  heavenly  virtue.  It  is  in  inanimate 
things  as  well  as  in  man  and  other  animate 
beings,  and  pervades  all  space.  The  matter- 
element,'  or  chi,  is  endowed  with  the  male 
and  the  female  principles,  or  positive  and 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        61 

negative  polarities,  as  we  might  call  them. 
It  is,  moreover,  characterised  by  the  five  con- 
stituent qualities  of  wood,  fire,  earth,  metal, 
and  water.  Hence  its  other  name,  Wu- 
hsieng,  or  '  Five  Qualities/ 

Things  and  animals,  except  human  beings, 
get  only  portions  of  the  force-element,  but 
man  receives  it  in  full,  and  this  becomes  in 
his  person  sing,  or  real  human  nature.  He 
has  thus  within  him  the  perfect  mirror  of  the 
heavenly  virtue  and  complete  power  of  un- 
derstanding. There  is  no  difference  in  this 
respect  between  a  sage  and  an  ordinary  man. 
To  both  the  force-element  is  uniformly  given. 
But  the  matter-element,  from  which  is  de- 
rived his  form  and  material  existence,  and 
which  constitutes  the  basis  of  his  mental  dis- 
position, is  different  in  quality  in  different 
men. 

Man's  real  nature,  or  sing,  although  orig- 
inally perfect,  becomes  affected  on  entering 
into  him,  or  is  modified  by  his  mental  dis- 
position, which  differs  according  to  the  dif- 
ferent state  of  the  matter-element.  Thus  a 
second  nature  is  formed  out  of  the  original. 
It  is  through  this  second  and  tainted  human 


62        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

nature  that  man  acts  well  or  ill.  When  a 
man  does  evil,  that  is  the  result  of  his  mental 
disposition  covering  or  interfering  with  his 
original  perfect  nature.  Wipe  this  vapour  of 
corrupted  thought  from  the  surface  of  your 
mental  mirror  and  it  will  shine  out  as  bright- 
ly as  if  it  had  never  been  covered  by  a  tem- 
porary mist.1 

Synoptically  expressed  and  applied  to  the 
microcosm  Chu-Hsi's  system  will  be  as  fol- 
lows : — 

Man. 

'Force-Element=Ori'0tnal  Nature  of  Man. 


Infinity 


Different  Human  Characters. 

, * * 

f  Male-Principle     ~]  Wood-quality. 


,  Fire- 

Matter-Elements  J-Earth- 

Metal- 
LFemale-PrincipleJ  Water- 


Dispositions  latent  in  Matter. 


Such  is,  in  its  outline,  Chu-Hsi's  view, 
which  received  the  sanction  of  the  ruling 
Tokugawa  family.  But  it  was  not  without 
its  opponents  in  Japan  as  well  as  in  China. 
Already  in  his  own  time,  Lu-Shang-Shan 
(b.  1 140  a.d.)  maintained,  in  opposition  to 

1  Cp.    T.    Haga's   Note   on   Japanese   Schools    of 
Philosophy.    T.  A.  S.  J.f  vol.  xx.  pt.  i.  p.  134. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        63 

the  high-sounding  erudition  of  Chu-Hsi,  that 
the  purification  of  the  heart  was  the  first  and 
main  point  of  study.1  The  same  protest  was 
more  systematically  urged  against  it  by  his 
great  follower,  Wang  Yang-ming  (1472- 
1528  a.d.),  who  found  warm  and  able  ad- 
mirers in  Japan  in  such  scholars  as  Nakae 
Toju  (1603-1678),  Kumazawa  Hanzan 
(1619-1691),  and  Oshio  Chusai  (1794- 
1837).  Among  other  great  opponents 
of  the  orthodox  philosophy,  such  names  as 
Ito  Jinsai  (1625-1706)  and  his  son  Togai 
(1670- 1 736),  Kaibara  Ekken  (1630- 17 14), 
Ogyu  Sorai  (1666- 1728),  are  to  be  men- 
tioned. These  scholars,  getting  their  funda- 
mental ideas  from  other  Chinese  thinkers, 
and  eager  to  remain  faithful  to  the  true  spirit 
of  Confucianism  itself,  pointed  out  many  in- 
consistencies in  Chu-Hsi's  theory,  and  were 
of  the  opinion  that  more  real  good  was  to 
be  achieved  in  proceeding  straight  to  action 
under  the  guidance  of  conscience  which  was 
heaven  and  all,  than  in  indulging  in  idle  talk 
about  the  subtlety  of  human  nature. 

The  philosophy  of  Chu-Hsi,  although  he 
1  Faber's  Doctrines  of  Confucius,  p.  33. 


64        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

calls  himself  the  true  exponent  of  Confucian- 
ism, is  not  at  all  Confucian.  It  is  greatly  in- 
debted to  Buddhism  and  Taoism,  or  better, 
Laoism,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  philosophy  orig- 
inated by  Lao-tze  (b.  604  B.C.),  one  of  the 
greatest  thinkers  that  China  has  ever  pro- 
duced. Since  Laoism,  through  the  wonder- 
ful Tao-t en-king,  a  small  book  by  Lao-tze 
himself,  but  especially  through  Chwang-tze, 
a  work  in  ten  books  by  his  famous  follower 
Chwang-chow,  has  exercised  considerable  in- 
fluence on  our  thought  for  twelve  centuries, 
a  word  about  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  be- 
fore we  go  on  to  consider  the  doctrine  of 
Shakya-muni. 

In  Lao-tze  we  find  the  perfect  opposite  of 
Confucius,  both  in  the  turn  of  his  mind  and 
in  his  views  and  methods  of  saving  the 
world.  Lao-tze  endeavoured  to  reform  hu- 
manity by  warning  them  to  cast  off  all 
human  artifice  and  to  return  to  nature.  This 
may  be  taken  as  the  whole  tenor  of  his  doc- 
trine :  Do  not  try  to  do  anything  with  your 
petty  will,  because  it  is  the  way  to  hinder 
and  spoil  the  spontaneous  growth  of  the  true 
virtue  that  permeates  the  universe.    To  fol- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        65 

low  Nature's  dictates,  while  helping  it  to  de- 
velop itself,  is  the  very  course  sanctioned  and 
followed  by  all  the  sages  worthy  of  the  name. 
Make  away  with  your  *  Ego '  and  learn  to 
value  simplicity  and  humiliation ;  for  in  total 
'  altruism  '  exists  the  completion  of  self,  and 
in  humble  contentment  and  yielding  pliancy 
are  to  be  found  real  grandeur  and  true 
strength.  Under  the  title  '  Dimming  Radi- 
ance '  he  says : 1 — 

*  Heaven  endures  and  earth  is  lasting.  And  why- 
can  heaven  and  earth  endure  and  be  lasting?  Be- 
cause they  do  not  live  for  themselves.  On  that  ac- 
count can  they  endure. 

1  Therefore  the  True  Man  puts  his  person  behind 
and  his  person  comes  to  the  front.  He  surrenders 
his  person  and  his  person  is  preserved.  Is  it  not 
because  he  seeks  not  his  own?  For  that  reason  he 
accomplishes   his   own.' 

Again  we  hear  him  '  Discoursing  on  Vir- 
tue :  :— 

1  Superior  virtue  is  non-virtue.  Therefore  it  has 
virtue.  Inferior  virtue  never  loses  sight  of  virtue. 
Therefore  it  has  no  virtue.  Superior  virtue  is  non- 
assertive  and  without  pretension.  Inferior  virtue 
asserts  and  makes  pretensions.' 


1  Cp.  Dr.  P.  Carus's  Lao-tze  Tao-teh-king. 


66        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

He  talks  about '  Returning  to  Simplicity  ' : 

'  Quit  the  so-called  saintliness ;  leave  the  so-called 
wisdom  alone;  and  the  people's  gain  will  be  in- 
creased by  a  hundredfold. 

'Abandon  the  so-called  mercy;  put  away  the  so- 
called  righteousness;  and  the  people  will  return  to 
filial  devotion  and  paternal  love. 

'Abandon  your  scheming;  put  away  your  devices; 
and  thieves  and  robbers  will  no  longer  exist.' 

Such  is  the  general  purport  of  the  doctrine 
expounded  by  Lao-tze.  It  is  well  to  remem- 
ber that  this  doctrine,  which  we  may  call  for 
distinction's  sake  Laoism,  has  intrinsically 
very  little  to  do  with  that  form  of  belief  now 
so  prevalent  among  the  Chinese,  and  which 
is  known  under  the  name  of  Taoism.  Al- 
though this  name  itself  is  derived  from  Lao- 
tze's  own  word  Tao,  meaning  Reason  or 
True  Path,  and  although  the  followers  of 
Taoism  see  in  the  great  philosopher  its  first 
revealer,  it  is  in  all  probability  nothing  more 
than  a  new  aspect  and  new  appellation  as- 
sumed by  that  aboriginal  Chinese  cult  which 
was  based  on  nature-  and  ancestor-worship. 
Ever  since  their  appearance  in  history  the 
Chinese  have  had  their  belief  in  Shang-ti, 
in  spirits,  and  in  natural  agencies.    This  cult 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT  67 

found,  at  an  early  date,  in  the  mystic  in- 
terpretation and  solution  of  life  as  expressed 
by  Lao-tze  and  his  followers,  the  means  of 
fresh  development.  The  philosophical  ideas 
of  these  thinkers  were  not  properly  under- 
stood, and  words  and  phrases  mostly  meta- 
phorical were  construed  in  such  a  manner 
that  they  came  to  mean  something  quite  dif- 
ferent from  what  the  original  writers  wished 
to  suggest.  Such  an  idea,  for  instance,  as  the 
deathlessness  of  a  True  Man  by  virtue  of  his 
incorporation  with  the  grand  Truth  Tao  that 
pervades  Heaven  and  Earth,  breathing  in 
the  eternity  of  the  universe,  was  easily  mis- 
interpreted in  a  very  matter-of-fact  manner, 
e.g.,  anybody  who  realised  Tao  could  then 
enjoy  the  much-wished-for  freedom  from 
actual  death.  You  see  how  easy  it  is  for  an 
ordinary  mind  to  pass  from  one  to  the  other 
when  it  hears  Chwang-tze  say : — 

'  Fire  cannot  burn  him  who  is  perfect  in  virtue, 
nor  water  drown  him;  neither  cold  nor  heat  can 
affect  him  injuriously;  neither  bird  nor  beast  can 
hurt  him/1 

Or  again : — 
1  Though  heaven  and  earth  were  to  be  overturned 

1  Cp.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxix. 


68        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

and  fall,  they  would  occasion  him  no  loss.  His 
judgment  is  fixed  on  that  in  which  there  is  no  ele- 
ment of  falsehood,  and  while  other  things  change, 
he  changes  not.'1 

We  want  no  great  flight  of  imagination 
therefore  to  follow  the  traces  of  development 
of  the  present  form  of  Taoism  with  its  oc- 
cult aspects.  The  eternity  attributed  to  a 
True  Man  in  its  Laoist  sense  begot  the  idea 
of  a  deathless  man  in  flesh  and  blood  en- 
dowed with  all  kinds  of  supernatural  powers. 
This  in  turn  produced  the  notion  that  these 
superhuman  beings  knew  some  secret  means 
to  preserve  their  life  and  could  work  other 
wonders.  Herbalism,  alchemy,  geomancy, 
and  other  magic  arts  owe  their  origin  to  this 
fountain-head  of  primitive  superstition. 

There  is  little  room  for  reasonable  doubt 
that  in  this  way  Taoism,  although  the  name 
itself  was  of  later  development,  has  been  in 
its  main  features  the  religion  of  China  par 
excellence  from  the  very  dawn  of  its  history. 
It  has  from  the  beginning  found  a  con- 
genial soil  in  the  heart  of  the  Chinese  people, 
who  still  continue  to  embrace  the  cult  with 

Cp.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxix. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        69 

great  enthusiasm,  and  in  whose  helpless 
credulity  the  Taoist  priests  of  to-day,  bor- 
rowing much  help  from  the  occult  sides  of 
Buddhism  and  Hinduism,  still  find  an  easy 
prey  for  their  necromantic  arts. 

Not  so  with  Laoism.  One  may  well  won- 
der how  such  an  uncongenial  doctrine  ever 
came  to  spring  from  the  soil  of  materialistic 
China.  Some  suggest  that  Lao-tze  was  a 
Brahman,  and  not  a  Chinese  at  all.  Another 
explanation  of  this  anomaly  is  to  be  found 
in  the  attempted  division  of  the  whole  Chi- 
nese civilisation  into  two  geographically  dis- 
tinct groups,  the  rigid  Northern  and  the 
more  romantic  Southern  types :  Laoism  be- 
longing to  the  latter,  while  Confucianism  be- 
longs to  the  former.  In  any  case,  the  re- 
semblance in  many  respects  between  the  doc- 
trine introduced  by  Lao-tze  and  the  higher 
form  of  Buddhism  is  very  striking.  Let  me 
take  this  opportunity  of  saying  something 
about  the  religion  of  Shakya-muni,  which 
has  occupied  our  mind  and  heart  for  the  past 
fifteen  centuries. 

But,  first  of  all,  let  me  say  that  I  am  not 
unaware  of  the  absurdity  of  trying  to  give 


70        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

you  anything  like  a  fair  idea  of  a  many-sided 
and  extremely  complicated  system  of  human 
belief  such  as  Buddhism  in  the  short  space 
which  is  at  my  disposal.  Very  far  from  it. 
Even  a  brief  summary  of  its  main  features 
would  take  an  able  speaker  at  least  a  couple 
of  hours.  So  I  humbly  confine  myself  to 
giving  you  some  hints  on  the  belief,  about 
which  most  of  you,  I  presume,  have  already 
had  occasion  to  hear  something,  the  religion 
which  took  its  origin  among  the  people  who 
claim  their  descent  from  the  same  Aryan 
stock  to  which  you  yourselves  belong.  Those 
who  would  care  to  read  about  it  will  find  an 
excellent  supply  of  knowledge  in  two  little 
books  called  Buddhism  and  Buddhism  in 
China,  written  respectively  by  Dr.  Rhys 
Davids  and  the  late  Rev.  S.  Beal,  not  to  men- 
tion the  late  Sir  Monier  Williams'  standard 
work.  A  perusal  of  the  Rev.  A.  Lloyd's 
paper  read  before  the  Asiatic  Society  of 
Japan  in  1894,  entitled  *  Developments  of 
Japanese  Buddhism/  is  very  desirable. 
There  are  also  two  chapters  devoted  to  this 
doctrine  in  Lafcadio  Hearn's  last  work, 
Japan,    This  enumeration  might  almost  ex- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        71 

empt  me  from  making  any  attempt  to  de- 
scribe it  myself. 

Buddhism  has,  to  begin  with,  two  distinct 
forms,  philosophical  and  popular,  which  may 
practically  be  taken  as  two  different  religions. 
Philosophical  Buddhism — or  at  least  the 
truest  form  of  it — is  a  system  based  upon  the 
recognition  of  the  utter  impermanency  of 
the  phenomenal  world  in  all  its  forms  and 
states.  It  believes  in  no  God  or  gods  what- 
ever as  a  personal  motive  power.  The  only 
thing  eternal  is  matter,  or  essence  of  matter, 
with  the  Karma,  or  Law  of  cause  and  effect, 
dwelling  incorporated  in  it.  Through  the 
never-ceasing  working  of  this  law  innumer- 
able forms  of  existence  develop,  which,  not- 
withstanding the  appearance  of  stability  they 
temporarily  assume,  are,  in  consequence  of 
the  action  and  reaction  of  the  very  law  to 
which  they  owe  their  existence,  constantly 
subject  to  everlasting  changes.  Constancy  is 
nowhere  to  be  found  in  this  universe  of 
phenomena.  It  is  therefore  an  act  of  un- 
speakable ignorance  on  the  part  of  human 
beings,  themselves  a  product  of  the  immuta- 
ble Karma,  to  attach  a  constant  value  to  this 


J2        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

dreamy  world  and  allow  themselves  to  lose 
their  mental  harmony  in  the  quest  of  shad- 
owy desires  and  of  their  shadowy  satisfac- 
tion, thus  plunging  themselves  into  the 
boundless  sea  of  misery.  True  salvation  is 
to  be  sought  in  the  complete  negation  of  ego- 
ism and  in  the  unconditional  absorption  of 
ourselves  in  the  fundamental  law  of  the  uni- 
verse. Shakya-muni  was  no  more  than  one 
of  a  series  of  teachers  whose  mission  it  is  to 
show  us  how  to  get  rid  of  our  fatal  ignorance 
of  this  grand  truth,  an  ignorance  which  is  at 
the  root  of  all  the  discontent  and  misery  of 
our  selfish  existence. 

Very  different  from  this  is  the  aspect  as- 
sumed by  the  popular  form  of  Buddhism. 
This  is  a  system  built  up  on  the  blind  worship 
of  personified  psychic  phenomena,  originally 
meant  merely  as  convenient  symbols  for  their 
better  contemplation,  and  in  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  human  teachers  of  truth  into  so 
many  personal  gods.  This  is  the  reason  why 
Buddhism,  so  essentially  atheistic,  has  come 
to  be  regarded  by  the  ordinary  Christian 
mind  as  polytheism,  or  as  a  degraded  form 
of  idolatry. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        73 

Now,  in  all  the  many  sects  of  Buddhism 
which,  have  been  planted  in  the  soil  of  Japan 
since  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century,  some 
of  which  soon  withered,  while  others  took 
deep  root  and  grew  new  branches,  these  two 
phases  have  always  been  recognised  and  util- 
ised in  their  proper  sphere  as  means  of  salva- 
tion. For  the  populace  there  was  the  lower 
Buddhism,  while  the  more  elevated  classes 
found  satisfaction  in  the  higher  form  and 
in  an  explanation  of  that  True  Path  which 
lies  hidden  beneath  the  complicated  symbolic 
system. 

Of  the  sects  which  have  exercised  great 
influence  on  Japanese  mentality,  the  follow- 
ing are  specially  to  be  mentioned :  the  Ten- 
dai,  the  Shingon,  the  Zen,  the  Hokke,  and 
the  Jodo,  with  its  offspring  the  Ikko  sect. 
Each  of  these  chose  its  own  means  of  reach- 
ing enlightenment  from  among  those  indi- 
cated by  Shakya-muni,  but  did  not  on  that 
account  entirely  reject  the  means  of  salvation 
preferred  by  the  others.  Some,  give  long 
lists  of  categories  and  antitheses,  and  seek 
to  define  the  truth  with  a  more  than  Aristote- 
lian precision  of  detail,  while  others  think 


74        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

it  advisable  to  realise  it  by  dint  of  faith  alone. 
But  among  these  means  of  salvation  the 
practice  advocated  by  the  Zen  sect  is  worthy 
of  special  consideration  in  this  place,  as  it 
has  exercised  great  influence  in  the  formation 
of  the  Japanese  spirit.  Zen  means  *  abstrac- 
tion/ standing  for  the  Sanskrit  Dhyana.  It 
is  one  of  the  six  means  of  arriving  at  Nir- 
vana, namely,  (i)  charity;  (2)  morality; 
(3)  patience;  (4)  energy;  (5)  contempla- 
tion; and  (6)  wisdom.  This  practice,  which 
dates  from  a  time  anterior  to  Shakya  him- 
self, consists  of  an  '  abstract  contemplation/ 
intended  to  destroy  all  attachment  to  exist- 
ence in  thought  and  wish.  From  the  earliest 
time  Buddhists  taught  four  different  degrees 
of  abstract  contemplation  by  which  the  mind 
frees  itself  from  all  subjective  and  objective 
trammels,  until  it  reaches  a  state  of  absolute 
indifference  or  self-annihilation  of  thought, 
perception,  and  will.1 

You  might  perhaps  wonder  how  a  method 
so  utterly  unpractical  and  speculative  as  that 
of  trying  to  arrive  at  final  enlightenment  by 

*E.  J.   Eitel's  Handbook   of  Chinese  Buddhism, 
p.  49- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        75 

pure  contemplation  could  ever  have  taken 
root  in  Japan,  among  a  people  who,  generally- 
speaking,  have  never  troubled  themselves 
much  about  things  apart  from  their  actual 
and  immediate  use.  An  explanation  of  this 
is  not  far  to  seek.  Eisai,  the  founder  of  the 
Rinzai  school,  the  branch  of  the  Contempla- 
tive sect  first  established  on  our  soil,  came 
back  to  Japan  from  his  second  visit  to  China 
in  1 192  a.d.1  This  was  the  time  when  the 
short-lived  rule  of  the  Minamoto  clan  ( 1 186- 
12 19)  was  nearing  the  end  of  its  real 
supremacy.  Only  fifteen  years  before  that 
the  world  had  seen  the  downfall  of  another 
mighty  clan.  The  battle  of  Dannoura  put 
an  end  to  the  Heike  ascendancy  after  an  in- 
cessant series  of  desperate  battles  extending 
over  a  century,  giving  our  soldier-like  qual- 
ities enough  occasion  for  an  excellent  school- 
ing. The  whole  country  during  this  period 
had  been  under  the  raging  sway  of  Mars, 
who  swept  with  his  fiery  breath  the  blossoms 
of  human  prosperity,  and  the  people  high  and 

1  Four  years  later  the  first  temple  of  this  school 
was  opened  in  Hakata  under  the  patronship  of  the 
Emperor  Gotoba. 


76        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

low  were  obliged  to  recognise  the  folly  of 
clinging  to  shadowy  desires  and  to  learn  the 
urgent  necessity  for  facing  every  emergency 
with  something  akin  to  indifference.  To  pass 
from  glowing  life  into  the  cold  grasp  of 
death  with  a  smile,  to  meet  the  hardest  de- 
crees of  fate  with  the  resolute  calm  of  stoic 
fortitude,  was  the  quality  demanded  of  every 
man  and  woman  in  that  stormy  age.  In  the 
meanwhile,  different  military  clans  had  been 
forming  themselves  in  different  parts  of 
Japan  and  preparing  to  wage  an  endless 
series  of  furious  battles  against  one  another. 
In  half  a  century  too  came  the  one  solitary 
invasion  of  our  whole  history  when  a  foreign 
power  dared  to  threaten  us  with  destruction. 
The  mighty  Kublei,  grandson  of  the  great 
Genghis  Khan,  haughty  with  his  resistless 
army,  whose  devastating  intrepidity  taught 
even  Europe  to  tremble  at  the  mention  of  his 
name,  despatched  an  embassy  to  the  Japanese 
court  to  demand  the  subjection  of  the  coun- 
try. The  message  was  referred  to  Kama- 
kura,  then  the  seat  of  the  Ho  jo  regency,  and 
was  of  course  indignantly  dismissed.  En- 
raged at  this,  Kublei  equipped  a  large  num- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        77 

ber  of  vessels  with  the  choicest  soldiers 
China  could  furnish.  The  invading  force 
was  successful  at  first,  and ,  committed  mas- 
sacres in  Iki  and  Tsushima,  islands  lying  be- 
tween Corea  and  Japan.  The  position  was 
menacing;  even  the  steel  nerves  of  the 
trained  Samurai  felt  that  strange  thrill  a 
patriot  knows.  Shinto  priests  and  Buddhist 
monks  were  equally  busy  at  their  prayers. 
A  new  embassy  came  from  the  threatening 
Mongol  leader.  The  imperious  ambassadors 
were  taken  to  Kamakura,  to  be  put  to  death 
as  an  unmistakable  sign  of  contemptuous  re- 
fusal. A  tremendous  Chinese  fleet  gathered 
in  the  boisterous  bay  of  Genkai  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1 28 1.  At  last  the  evening  came  with 
the  ominous  glow  on  the  horizon  that  fore- 
tells an  approaching  storm.  It  was  the  plan 
of  the  conquering  army  victoriously  to  land 
the  next  morning  on  the  holy  soil  of  Kyu- 
shu. But  during  this  critical  night  a  fearful 
typhoon,  known  to  this  day  as  the  '  Divine 
Storm/  arose,  breaking  the  jet-black  sky 
with  its  tremendous  roar  of  thunder  and 
bathing  the  glittering  armour  of  our  soldiers 
guarding  the  coastline  in  white  flashes  of 


?S        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

dazzling  light.  The  very  heaven  and  earth 
shook  before  the  mighty  anger  of  nature. 
The  result  was  that  the  dawn  of  the  next 
morning  saw  the  whole  fleet  of  the  proud 
Yuan,  that  had  darkened  the  water  for  miles, 
swept  completely  away  into  the  bottomless 
sea  of  Genkai,  to  the  great  relief  of  the  hor- 
ror-stricken populace,  and  to  the  unspeakable 
disappointment  of  our  determined  soldiers. 
Out  of  the  hundred  thousand  warriors  who 
manned  the  invading  ships,  only  three  are  re- 
corded to  have  survived  the  destruction  to 
tell  the  dismal  tale  to  their  crestfallen  great 
Khan! 

Then  after  a  short  interval  of  a  score  of 
peaceful  years,  Japan  was  plunged  again  into 
another  series  of  internal  disturbances,  from 
which  she  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  emerged 
until  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, when  order  and  rest  were  brought  back 
by  the  able  hand  of  Tokugawa  Iyeyasu. 
During  all  these  troublous  days,  the  original 
Contemplative  sect,  paralleled  soon  after  its 
establishment  in  Japan  by  a  new  school  called 
Soto,  as  ft  was  again  supplemented  by  an- 
other, the  Obaku  school,  five  centuries  after- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        79 

wards,  found  ample  material  to  propagate  its 
special  method  of  enlightenment.  This  sect, 
which  drew  its  patrons  from  the  ruling 
classes  of  Japan,  was  unanimously  looked  up 
to  as  best  calculated  to  impart  the  secret 
power  of  perfect  self-control  and  undisturb- 
able  peace  of  mind.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  ultimate  riddance  in  the  Buddhist 
sense,  the  entrance  into  cold  Nirvana,  was 
not  what  our  practical  mind  wanted  to  real- 
ise. It  was  the  stoic  indifference,  enabling 
man  to  meet  after  a  moment's  thought,  or 
almost  instinctively,  any  hardships  that 
human  life  might  impose,  that  had  brought 
about  its  otherwise  strange  popularity. 

Another  charm  it  offered  to  the  people  of 
the  illiterate  Middle  Ages,  when  they  had  to 
attend  to  other  things  than  a  leisurely  pur- 
suit of  literature,  was  its  systematic  neglect 
of  book-learning.  Truth  was  to  be  directly 
read  from  heart  to  heart.  The  intervention 
of  words  and  writing  was  regarded  as  a 
hindrance  to  its  true  understanding.  A  rudi- 
mentary symbolism  expressed  by  gestures 
was  all  that  a  Zen  priest  really  relied  upon 
for    the    communication    of    the    doctrine. 


80        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

Everybody  with  a  heart  to  feel  and  a  mind 
to  understand  needed  nothing-  further  to  be- 
gin and  finish  his  quest  of  the  desired  free- 
dom from  life's  everlasting  torments. 

The  self-control  that  enables  us  not  to  be- 
tray our  inner  feeling  through  a  change  in 
our  expression,  the  measured  steps  with 
which  we  are  taught  to  walk  into  the  hideous 
jaws  of  death — in  short,  all  those  qualities 
which  make  a  present  Japanese  of  truly  Jap- 
anese type  look  strange,  if  not  queer,  to  your 
eyes,  are  in  a  most  marked  degree  a  product 
of  that  direct  or  indirect  influence  on  our 
past  mentality  which  was  exercised  by  the 
Buddhist  doctrine  of  Dhyana  taught  by  the 
Zen  priests. 

Another  benefit  which  the  Zen  sect  con- 
ferred on  us  is  the  healthy  influence  it  exer- 
cised on  our  taste.  The  love  of  nature  and 
the  desire  of  purity  that  we  had  shown  from 
the  earliest  days  of  our  history,  took,  under 
the  leading  idea  of  the  Contemplative  sect, 
a  new  development,  and  began  to  show  that 
serene  dislike  of  loudness  of  form  and  colour. 
That  apparent  simplicity  with  a  fulness  of 
meaning  behind  it,  like  a  Dhyana  symbol  it- 


UKI  \ 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        81 

self,  which  we  find  so  pervadingly  manifest- 
ed in  our  works  of  art,  especially  in  those  of 
the  Ashikaga  period  (1400-1600  a.d.),  is 
certainly  to  be  counted  among  the  most  valu- 
able results  which  the  Zen  doctrine  quickened 
us  to  produce. 

In  short,  so  far-reaching  is  the  influence 
of  the  Contemplative  sect  on  the  formation 
of  the  Japanese  spirit  as  you  find  it  at  pres- 
ent, that  an  adequate  interpretation  of  its 
manifestations  would  be  out  of  the  question 
unless  based  on  a  careful  study  of  this  branch 
of  Buddhism.  So  long  as  the  Zen  sect  is  not 
duly  considered,  the  whole  set  of  phenomena 
peculiar  to  Japan — from  the  all-pervading 
laconism  to  the  hara-kiri — will  remain  a 
sealed  book. 

This  fact  is  my  excuse  for  having  detained 
you  for  so  long  on  the  subject. 

I  now  pass  on  to  the  consideration  of  our 
own  native  cult. 

Shinto,  or  the  '  Path  of  the  Gods/  is  the 
name  by  which  we  distinguish  the  body  of 
our  -national  belief  from  Buddhism,  Chris- 
tianity, or  any  other  form  of  religion.  It  is 
remarkable  that  this  appellation,  like  Nippon 


82        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

(which  corresponds  to  your  word  Japan), 
is  no  purely  Japanese  term.  Buddhism  is 
called  Buppo  (from  Butsu,  Buddha,  and  ho, 
doctrine)  or  Bukkyo  (kyo,  teaching)  ;  Con- 
fucianism is  known  as  Jukyo  (Ju,  literati) ; 
and  both  terms  are  taken  from  the  Chinese. 
In  keeping  with  these  we  have  Shinto  (Shin, 
deity,  and  to,  way).  This  state  of  things  in 
some  measure  explains  the  rather  unstable 
condition  in  which  Buddhism  on  its  first  ar- 
rival found  our  national  cult.  It  has  ever 
since  remained  in  its  main  aspects  nothing 
more  than  a  form  of  ancestor-worship  based 
on  the  central  belief  in  the  divine  origin  of 
the  imperial  line.  A  systematised  creed  it 
never  was  and  has  never  become,  even  if  we 
take  into  consideration  the  attempts  at  its 
consolidation  made  by  such  scholars  as 
Yamazaki-Ansai  (1618-1682),  who  in  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  tried  to 
formalise  it  in  accordance  with  Chu-Hsi's 
philosophy,  or,  later  still,  by  such  eager  re- 
vivalists as  Hirata-Atsutane  (1776- 1843), 
etc.  At  the  time  when  Shintoism  had  to 
meet  its  mighty  foe  from  India,  its  whole 
mechanism  was  very  simple.    It  consisted  in 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        83 

a  number  of  primitive  rites,  such  as  the  re- 
cital of  the  liturgy,  the  offering  of  eatables  to 
the  departed  spirits  of  deified  ancestors,  pa- 
triarchal, tribal,  or  national.  This  naive  cult 
was  as  innocent  of  the  cunning  ideas  and 
subtle  formalisms  of  the  rival  creed  as  its 
shrines  were  free  from  the  decorations  and 
equipments  of  an  Indian  temple.  So,  al- 
though at  the  start  Buddhism  met  with  some 
obstinate  resistance  at  the  hand  of  the  Shin- 
toists,  who  attributed  the  visitations  of 
pestilence  that  followed  the  introduction  of 
the  foreign  belief  to  the  anger  of  the  native 
gods,  its  superiority  in  organisation  soon 
overcame  these  difficulties;  especially  from 
the  time  when  the  great  Buddhist  priest 
Kukai  (774-835  a.d.)  hit  upon  the  ingenious 
but  mischievous  idea  of  solving  the  dilemma 
by  the  establishment  of  what  is  generally 
known  in  our  history  as  Ryobu-Shinto,  or 
double-faced  Shinto.  According  to  this  doc- 
trine>  a  Shinto  god  was  to  be  regarded  as  an 
incarnation  of  a  corresponding  Indian  deity, 
who  made  his  appearance  in  Japan  through 
metamorphosis  for  Japan's  better  salvation 
— a  doctrine  which  is  no  more  than  a  clever 


84        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

application  of  the  notion  known  in  India  as 
Nirmanakaya.  This  incarnation  theory 
opened  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  the  ex- 
pansion of  Buddhism  in  Japan,  extending 
over  a  period  of  eleven  centuries,  during 
which  Shintoism  was  placed  in  a  very  awk- 
ward position.  It  was  at  last  restored  to  its 
original  purity  at  the  beginning  of  the  pres- 
ent Meiji  period,  and  that  only  after  a  cen- 
tury of  determined  endeavour  on  the  part  of 
native  Shintoist  scholars. 

From  these  words  you  might  perhaps  con- 
clude that  Buddhism  succeeded  in  supplant- 
ing the  native  cult,  at  least  for  more  than  a 
thousand  years.  But,  strange  to  say,  if  we 
judge  the  case  not  by  outward  appearances, 
but  by  the  religious  conviction  that  lurks  in 
the  depth  of  the  heart,  we  cannot  but  recog- 
nise the  undeniable  fact  that  no  real  conver- 
sion has  ever  been  achieved  during  the  past 
eleven  centuries  by  the  doctrine  of  Buddha. 
Our  actual  self,  notwithstanding  the  differ- 
ent clothes  we  have  put  on,,  has  ever  re- 
mained true  in  its  spirit  to  our  native  cult. 
Speaking  generally,  we  are  still  Shintoists  to 
this  day — Buddhists,  Christians,  and  all — so 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        85 

long  as  we  are  born  Japanese.  This  might 
sound  to  you  somewhat  paradoxical.  Here 
is  the  explanation : — 

For  an  average  Japanese  mind  in  present 
Japan,  thanks  to  the  ancestor-worship  prac- 
tised consciously  or  unconsciously  from  time 
immemorial,  it  is  not  altogether  easy  to  imag- 
ine the  spirit  of  the  deceased,  if  it  believes  in 
one  at  all,  to  be  something  different  and  dis- 
tant from  our  actual  living  self.  The  de- 
parted, although  invisible,  are  thought  to  be 
leading  their  ethereal  life  in  the  same  world 
in  much  the  same  state  as  that  to  which  they 
had  been  accustomed  while  on  earth.  Like 
the  little  child  so  touchingly  described  by 
Wordsworth,  we  cannot  see  why  we  should 
not  count  the  so-called  dead  still  among  the 
existing.  The  difference  between  the  two  is 
that  of  tangibility  or  visibility,  but  nothing 
more. 

The  rctison  d'etre  of  this  illusive  notion 
is,  of  course,  not  far  to  seek.  Any  book  on 
anthropology  or  ethnology  would  tell  you 
how  sleep,  trance,  dream,  hallucination,  re- 
flection in  still  water,  etc.,  help  to  build  up 
the  spirit-world  in  the  untaught  mind  of 


86        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

primitive  man.  Yet  it  must  be  remembered 
that  these  origins  have  led  to  something  far 
higher,  to  something  of  real  value  to  our 
nation,  and  to  something  which  is  a  moral 
force  in  our  daily  lives  that  may  well  be  com- 
pared to  what  is  efficacious  in  other  creeds. 
Notice  the  fact  that  Buddhism  from  the  mo- 
ment of  its  introduction  in,  the  sixth  century 
after  Christ  to  this  very  day  has  on  the  whole 
remained  the  religion,  so  to  say,  of  night  and 
gloomy  deaths  while  Shintoism  has  always 
retained  its  firm  hold  on  the  popular  mind  as 
the  cult,  if  I  might  so  express  it,  of  daylight 
and  the  living  dead.  From  the  very  dawn  of 
our  history  we  read  of  patriarchs,  chieftains, 
and  national"  heroes  deified  and  worshipped 
as  so  many  guardian  spirits  of  families,  of 
clans,  or  of  the  country.  Nor  has  this  proc- 
ess of  deification  come  to  an  end  yet,  even  in 
this  age  of  airship  and  submarine  boat.  We 
continue  to  erect  shrines  to  men  of  merit. 
This  may  look  very  strange  to  you,  but  is  not 
your  poet  Swinburne  right  when  he  sings — 

'Whoso  takes  the  world's  life  on  him  and  his  own 

lays  down, 
He,  dying  so,  lives.' 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        87 

Might  not  these  lines  explain,  when  duly  ex- 
tended, the  subtle  feeling  that  lurks  behind 
our  apparently  incomprehensible  custom  of 
speaking  with  the  departed  over  the  altar? 
The  present  deification  is,  like  your  custom 
of  erecting-  monuments  to  men  of  merit>  a 
way  of  making  the  best  part  of  a  man's  ca- 
reer legible  to  the  coming  generations.    The 
numberless  shrines  you  now  find  scattered 
all  over  Japan  are  only  so  many  chapters 
written  in  unmistakable  characters  of  the  les- 
sons our  beloved  and  revered    heroes    and 
good  men  have  left  us  for  our  edification  and 
amelioration.    It  is  in  the  sunny  space  with- 
in the  simple  railing  of  these  Shinto  shrineSj 
where  the  smiling  presence   of   the   patron 
spirit  of  a  deified  forefather  or  a  great  man 
is  so  clearly  felt,   that  our  childhood  has 
played  for  tens  of  centuries  its  games  of  in- 
nocent joy.     Monthly  and  yearly  festivals 
are  observed  within  the  divine  enclosure  of  a 
guardian   god,    when   a   whole   community 
under  his  protection  let  themselves    go    in 
good-natured  laughter  and  gleeful  mirth  be- 
fore the  favouring    eyes    of    their-  divine 
patron.    How  different  is  this  jovial  feeling 


88        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

from  that  gloomy  sensation  with  which  we 
approach  a  Buddhist  temple,  recalling  death 
and  the  misery  of  life  from  every  corner  of 
its  mysterious  interior.  Such  seriousness  has 
never  been  congenial  to  the  gay  Japanese 
mind  with  its  strong  love  of  openness  and 
light.  Until  death  stares  us  right  in  the  face, 
we  do  not  care  to  be  religious  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  term.  True,  we  say  and  think 
that  we  believe  in  death,  but  all  the  while  this 
so-called  death  is  nothing  else  than  a  new 
life  in  this  present  world  of  ours  led  in  a 
supernatural  way.  For  instance,  when  the 
father  of  a  Japanese  family  begins  a  journey 
of  any  length,  the  raised  part  of  his  room  will 
be  made  sacred  to  his  memory  during  his 
temporary  absence ;  his  family  will  gather  in 
front  of  it  and  think  of  him,  expressing  their 
devotion  and  love  in  words  and  gifts  in  kind. 
In  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  families  that 
have  some  one  or  other  of  their  members 
fighting  for  the  nation  in  this  dreadful  war 
with  Russia,  there  will  not  be  even  one  soli- 
tary house  where  the  mother,  wife,  or  sister 
is  not  practising  this  simple  rite  of  endear- 
ment for  the  beloved  and  absent  member  of 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        89 

the  family.  And  if  he  die  on  the  field,  the 
mental  attitude  of  the  poor  bereaved  towards 
the  never-returning  does  not  show  any  sub- 
stantial difference.  The  temporarily  depart- 
ed will  now  be  regarded  as  the  forever  de- 
parted, but  not  as  lost  or  passed  away.  His 
essential  self  is  ever  present,  only  not  visible. 
Daily  offerings  and  salutations  continue  in 
exactly  the  same  way  as  when  he  was  absent 
for  a  time.  Even  in  the  mind  of  the  modern 
Japanese  with  its  extremely  agnostic  ten- 
dencies, there  is  still  one  corner  sacred 
to  this  inherited  feeling.  You  could 
sooner  convince  an  ordinary  European 
of  the  non-existence  of  a  personal  God. 
When  it  gets  dusk  every  bird  knows 
whither  to  wing  its  way  home.  Even 
so  with  us  all  when  the  night  of  Death 
spreads  its  dark  folds  over  our  mortal 
mind! 

But  ask  a  modern  Japanese  of  ordinary 
education  in  the  broad  daylight  of  life,  if  he 
believes  in  a  God  in  the  Christian  sense ;  or  in 
Buddha  as  the  creator;  or  in  the  Shinto 
deities ;  or  else  in  any  other  personal  agency 
or  agencies,   as  originating  and  presiding 


90        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

over  the  universe;  and  you  would  imme- 
diately get  an  answer  in  the  negative  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred.  Do  you 
ask  why?  First,  because  our  school  educa- 
tion throughout  its  whole  course  has,  ever 
since  its  re-establishment  thirty-five  years 
ago,  been  altogether  free  from  any  teaching 
of  a  denominational  nature.  The  ethical 
foundations  necessary  for  the  building  up  of 
character  are  imparted  through  an  adequate 
commentary  on  the  moral  sayings  and 
maxims  derived  mostly  from  Chinese 
classics.  Secondly,  because  the  little  knowl- 
edge about  natural  science  which  we  obtain 
at  school  seems  to  make  it  impossible  to 
anchor  our  rational  selves  on  anything  other 
than  an  impersonal  law.  Thirdly,  because 
we  do  not  see  any  convincing  reason  why 
morals  should  be  based  on  the  teaching  of  a 
special  denomination,  in  face  of  the  fact  that 
we  can  be  upright  and  brave  without  the  help 
of  a  creed  with  a  God  or  deities  at  its  other 
end.  So,  for  the  average  mind  of  the  edu- 
cated Japanese  something  like  modern  scien- 
tific agnosticism,  with  a  strong  tendency  to- 
wards the  materialistic  monism  of  recent 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        91 

times,  is  just  what  pleases  and  satisfies  it 
most. 

If  not  so  definitely  thought  out,  and  if  ex- 
pressed with  much  less  learned  terminology, 
the  thought  among  our  educated  classes  as 
regards  supernatural  agencies  has  during  the 
past  three  centuries  been  much  the  same. 
The  Confucian  warning  against  meddling 
with  things  supernatural,  the  atheistic  views 
and  hermit-like  conduct  of  the  adherents  of 
Laoism,  and  the  higher  Buddhism,  all  con- 
tributed towards  the  consolidation  of  this 
mental  attitude  with  a  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious belief  in  the  existing  spirit-world.  Ex- 
cept for  the  philosophy  which  they  knew  how 
to  utilise  for  their  practical  purposes,  the 
educated  felt  no  charm  in  religion.  The 
lower  form  of  Buddhism  with  its  pantheon 
has  been  held  as  something  only  for  the  aged 
and  the  weak.  For  the  execution  of  the 
religious  rites,  at  funerals  or  on  other  occa- 
sions (except  in  the  rare  instances  when 
some  families  for  a  special  reason  of  their 
own  preferred  the  Shintoist  form),  we  have 
unanimously  drawn  on  the  Buddhist  priest- 
hood, just  in  the  same  way  as  you  go  to 


92        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

your  family  doctor  or  attorney  in  case  of  a 
bodily  or  legal  complication,  knowing  well 
that  religion  as  we  have  understood  it  is 
something  as  much  outside  the  pale  of  the 
layman  as  medicine  and  law. 

For  the  proper  conduct  of  our  daily  life  as 
members  of  society,  the  body  of  Confucian 
morality  resting  on  the  tripod  of  loyalty, 
filial  piety,  and  honesty,  has  been  the  only 
standard  which  high  and  low  have  alike  rec- 
ognised. These  ethical  ideals,  when  em- 
braced by  that  formidable  warrior  caste  who 
played  such  an  important  part  in  feudal 
Japan,  form  the  code  of  unwritten  morality 
known  among  us  as  Bushido,  which  means 
the  Path  of  the  Samurai.  This  last  word, 
which  has  found  its  way  into  your  language, 
is  the  substantival  derivative  from  the  verb 
samurau  (to  serve),  and,  like  its  English 
counterpart  '  knight '  (Old  English  cniht), 
has  raised  itself  from  its  original  sense  of  a 
retainer  (cp.  German  Knecht)  to  the  mean- 
ing in  which  it  is  now  used.  To  be  a  Sa- 
murai in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  has  been 
the  highest  aspiration  of  a  Japanese.  Your 
term  '  gentleman,'  when  understood  in  its 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        93 

uest  sense,  would  convey  to  you  an  approxi- 
mate idea  if  you  added  a  dash  of  soldier 
blood  to  it.  'Rectitude,  courage,  benevolence, 
politeness,  veracity,  loyalty,  and  a  predom- 
inating sense  of  honour — these  are  the  chief 
colours  with  which  a  novelist  in  the  days  of 
yore  used  to  paint  an  ideal  Samurai ;  and  his 
list  of  desirable  qualities  was  not  considered 
complete  without  a  well-developed  body  and 
an  expression  of  the  face  that  was  manly 
but  in  no  way  brutal.  No  special  stress  was 
at  first  laid  on  the  cultivation  of  thinking 
power  and  book-learning,  though  they  were 
not  altogether  discouraged;  it  was  thought 
that  these  accomplishments  might  develop 
other  qualities  detrimental  to  the  principal 
character,  such  as  sophistry  or  pedantry.  To 
have  good  sense  enough  to  keep  his  name 
honourable,  and  to  act  instead  of  talking  clev- 
erly, was  the  chief  ambition  of  a  Samurai. 

But  this  view  gradually  became  obscured. 
It  lost  its  fearful  rigidity  in  course  of  time, 
as  the  world  became  more  and  more  sure  of 
a  lasting  peace.  Literature  and  music  have 
gradually  added  softening  touches  to  its 
somewhat  brusque  features. 


94        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

It  must,  however,  be  always  remembered 
that  the  keynote  of  Bushido  was  from  the 
very  beginning  an  indomitable  sense  of  hon- 
our. This  was  all  in  all  to  the  mind  of  the 
Samurai,  whose  sword  at  his  side  reminded 
him  at  every  movement  of  the  importance  of 
his  good  name.  The  Care  with  which  he 
preserved  it  reached  in  some  cases  to  a 
pathetic  extreme;  he  preferred,  for  example, 
an  instant  suicide  to  a  reputation  on  which 
doubt  had  been  cast,  however  falsely.  The 
very  custom  of  seppuku  (better  known  as 
hara-kiri),  a  form  of  suicide  not  known  in 
early  Japan,1  is  an  outcome  of  this  love  of  an 
unstained  name,  originating,  in  my  opinion, 
in  the  metaphorical  use  of  the  word  ham 
(abdomen),  which  was  the  supposed  organ 
for  the  begetting  of  ideas.  In  consequence 
of  this  curious  localisation  of  the  thinking 
faculty,  the  word  hara  came  to  denote  at  the 
same  time  intention  or  idea.  Therefore,  in 
cutting  open  (kiru)  his  abdomen,  a  person 

1  The  first  mention  in  books  of  a  similar  mode  of 
death  dates  from  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. But  it  does  not  seem  that  the  custom  became 
universal  until  a  considerably  later  period. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        95 

whose  motives  had  come  to  be  suspected 
meant  to  show  that  his  inside  was  free  from 
any  trace  of  ideas  not  worthy  of  a  Samurai. 
This  explanation  is,  I  think,  amply  sustained 
by  the  constant  use  to  this  very  day  of  the 
word  hara  in  the  sense  of  one's  ideas. 

So  Bushido,  as  you  will  now  see,  was  it- 
self but  a  manifestation  of  those  same  forces 
already  at  work  in  the  formation  of  Japanese 
thought,  like  Buddhism,  Confucianism,  etc. 
But  as  it  has  played  a  most  important  part 
in  the  development  of  modern  Japan,  I 
thought  it  more  proper  to  consider  it  as  an 
independent  factor  in  the  history  of  our 
civilisation.  Had  it  not  been  for  this  all- 
daring  spirit  of  Bushido,  Japan  would  never 
have  been  able  to  make  the  gigantic  progress 
which  she  has  been  achieving  in  these  last 
forty  years.  As  soon  as  our  ports  were  flung 
open  to  the  reception  of  Western  culture, 
Samurai,  now  deeply  conscious  of  their  new 
mission,  took  leave  of  those  stern  but  faithful 
friends,  their  beloved  swords,  not  without 
much  reluctance,  even  as  did  Sir  Bedivere,  in 
order  to  take  up  the  more  peaceful  pen,  which 
they  were  determined  to  wield  with  the  same 


96        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

knightly  spirit.  It  is,  in  short,  Bushido  that 
has  urged  our  Japan  on  for  the  last  three 
centuries,  and  will  continue  to  urge  her  on, 
on  forever,  onward  to  her  ideals  of  the  true, 
the  good,  and  the  beautiful.  Look  to  the 
spot  where  every  Japanese  sabre  and  every 
Japanese  bayonet  is  at  present  pointing  wkh 
its  icy  edge  of  determined  patriotism  in  the 
dreary  fields  of  Manchuria,  or  think  of  the 
intrepid  heroes  on  our  men-of-war  and  our 
torpedo-boats  amid  blinding  snowstorms  and 
the  glare  of  hostile  searchlights,  and  your 
eyes  will  invariably  end  at  the  magic  Path  of 
the  Samurai. 

Having  thus  far  followed  my  enumeration 
of  the  various  factors  in  the  formation  of  the 
present  thought  in  Japan,  some  of  you  might 
perhaps  be  curious  to  know  what  Christianity 
has  contributed  towards  the  general  stock  of 
modern  Japanese  mentality. 

It  must  surely  have  exercised  a  very 
healthy  influence  on  our  mind  since  its  re- 
introduction  at  the  beginning  of  the  present 
Meiji  period.  Some  have  indeed  gone  so  far 
as  to  say  that  we  owe  the  whole  success  we 
have  up  to  now  achieved  in  this  remarkable 


/ 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        97 

war  to  the  holy  inspiration  we  drew  from 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ. 

I  indorse  this  opinion  to  its  full  extent,  but 
only  if  we  are  to  understand  by  His  teaching 
that  whole  body  of  truth  and  love  which  are 
of  the  essence  of  Christianity,  and  which  we 
used  in  former  days  to  call  by  other  names, 
such  as  Bushido,  Confucianism,  etc.  But  if 
you  insist  on  having  it  understood  in  a  nar- 
row sectarian  sense,  with  a  personal  God  and 
rigid  formalities  as  its  main  features,  then  I 
should  say  that  I  cannot  agree  with  you,  for 
this  Christianity  occupies  rather  an  awkward 
place  in  our  Japanese  mind,  finding  itself 
somewhere  between  the  national  worship  of 
the  living  dead,  and  modern  agnosticism,  or 
scientific  monism.  In  our  earlier  fishery  for 
new  knowledge  in  the  Western  seas,  fish 
other  than  those  fit  for  our  table  were 
caught  and  dressed  along  with  some  really 
nourishing;  the  result  was  disastrous,  and  we 
gradually  came  to  learn  more  caution  than  at 
first.  The  Roman  Catholics,  more  enthu- 
siastic than  discreet,  committed  wholesale 
outrages  on  our  harmless  ways  of  faith  in  the 
early  days  of  the  seventeenth  century,  which 

G 


98        THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

did  much  to  leave  in  bad  repute  the  creed  of 
Jesus  Christ.  And  since  the  prohibition 
against  Christianity  was  removed,  many  a 
missionary  has  been  so  particular  about  the 
plate  in  which  the  truth  is  served  as  to  make 
us  doubt,  with  reason,  if  that  be  the  spirit  of 
the  immortal  Teacher.  The  truth  and  poetry 
that  breathe  in  your  Gospels  have  been  too 
often  paraphrased  in  the  senseless  prose  of 
mere  formalism.  Otherwise  Christianity 
would  have  rendered  us  better  help  in  our 
eternal  march  towards  the  ideal  emancipa- 
tion,   y 

There  remains  still  one  highly  important 
thing  to  be  considered  as  a  formative  element 
of  the  Japanese  spirit.  I  mean  the  landscape 
and  the  physical  aspects  of  Japan  in  general. 

It  is  well  known  that  an  intimate  connec- 
tion exists  between  the  mind  and  the  nature 
which  surrounds  it.  A  moment's  considera- 
tion of  the  development  of  Hellenic  sculpture 
and  of  the  Greek  climate,  or  of  the  Teutonic 
mythology  and  the  physical  condition  of 
Northern  Europe,  will  bring  conviction  on 
that  point.  Is  not  the  effect  of  the  blue  sky 
on  Italian  painting,  and  the  influence  of  the 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT        99 

dusky  heaven  on  the  pictorial  art  of  the 
Netherlands,  clearly  traceable  in  the  produc- 
tions of  the  old  masters?  A  study  of  Lon- 
don psychology  at  the  present  moment  will 
never  be  complete  without  special  chapters 
on  your  open  spaces  and  your  fogs. 

In  order  to  convey  anything  like  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  physical  aspects  of  Japan 
from  the  geographical  and  meteorological 
points  of  view,  it  would  be  necessary  to  fur- 
nish a  detailed  account  of  the  country,  with  a 
long  list  of  statistical  tables  and  the  ample 
help  of  lantern  slides.  But  on  this  occasion 
I  must  be  content  with  naming  some  of  the 
typical  features  of  our  surroundings. 

Japan,  as  you  know,  is  a  long  and  narrow 
series  of  islands,  stretching  from  frigid 
Kamchatka  in  the  north  to  half-tropical  For- 
mosa in  the  south.  The  whole  country  is 
mountainous,  with  comparatively  little  flat 
land,  and  is  perforated  with  a  great  number 
of  volcanoes,  the  active  ones  alone  number- 
ing above  fifty  at  present.  With  this  is  con- 
nected the  annoying  frequency  of  earth- 
quakes, and  the  agreeable  abundance  of 
thermal  springs — two  phenomena  that  can- 


ioo      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

not  remain  without  effect  on  the  people's 
character. 

There  are  two  other  natural  agencies  to  be 
mentioned  in  this  connection.  One  is  the 
Kuro-shio,  or  Black  Stream,  so  called  on  ac- 
count of  the  deep  black  colour  which  the 
ocean  current  displays  in  cloudy  weather. 
This  warm  ocean  river,  having  a  temperature 
of  27°  centigrade  in  summer,  begins  its 
course  in  the  tropical  regions  near  the 
Philippine  Islands,  and  on  reaching  the 
southern  isles  is  divided  by  them  into  two  un- 
equal parts.  The  greater  portion  of  it  skirts 
the  Japanese  islands  on  their  eastern  coast, 
imparting  to  them  that  warm  and  moist  at- 
mosphere which  is  one  source  of  the  fertility 
of  the  soil  and  the  beauty  of  the  vegetation. 
The  effect  of  the  Kuro-shio  upon  the  climate 
and  productions  of  the  lands  along  which  it 
flows  may  be  fairly  compared  with  that  of 
the  Gulf  Stream  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  which 
in  situation,  direction,  and  volume  it  resem- 
bles. To  this  most  noticeable  cause  of  the 
climatic  condition  of  the  Japanese  islands 
must  beadded  another  agency  closely  related 
to  it  in  its  effect.    Our  archipelago  lies  in  the 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       101 

region  of  the  northeast  monsoon,  which  af- 
fects in  a  marked  degree  the  climate  of  all 
those  parts  over  which  the  winds  blow.  Al- 
though the  same  monsoon  blows  over  the 
eastern  countries  of  the  Asiatic  continent,  the 
insular  character  of  Japan,  and  the  proximity 
of  the  above-mentioned  warm  current  on 
both  sides  of  the  islands,  give  to  the  winds 
which  prevail  a  character  they  do  not  possess 
on  the  continent. 

Although  the  effect  of  the  chill  and  frost 
of  the  northern  part  of  Japan,  with  its  heavy 
snowfall  and  covered  sky,  cannot  be  without 
its  depressing  influence  on  human  nature  in 
that  part  of  the  island,  this  has  not  played 
any  serious  role  in  the  formation  of  the  Jap- 
anese character  as  a  whole.  It  is  only  at  a 
rather  recent  date  that  the  northern  provinces 
began  to  contribute  their  share  to  the  general 
progress  of  the  country.  This  can  very 
easily  be  explained  by  the  gradual  advance 
of  Japanese  civilisation  from  the  southwest 
to  the  northeast.  Until  comparatively  lately 
the  colder  region  of  Japan  north  of  the  37th 
degree  of  latitude  has  remained  very  nearly 
inactive  in  our  history.     It  is  almost  ex- 


102      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

clusively  in  the  more  sunny  south,  extending 
down  to  the  31st  degree,  that  the  main  activ- 
ity of  the  Japanese  mind  and  hand  has 
been  shown.  And  the  effect  is  the  sunniness 
of  character  and  rather  hot  temperament 
which  we,  as  a  whole,  share  in  a  marked  de- 
gree with  the  southern  Europeans,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  somewhat  gloomy  calm  and 
deliberation  noticed  both  among  oriental  and 
occidental  northerners. 

Notwithstanding  the  comparatively  high 
amount  of  rainfall,  the  fact  remains  that  as 
a  nation  we  have  spent  most  of  our  life  under 
the  serene  canopy  of  blue  sky  characteristic 
of  a  volcanic  country.  Mountains,  graceful 
rather  than  sublime,  and  fertile  plains  with 
rich  verdure,  its  beauties  changing  slowly 
from  the  white  blossoms  of  spring  to  the 
crimson  leaves  of  autumn,  have  afforded  us 
many  welcome  sights  to  rest  our  eyes  upon ; 
while  the  azure  stretch  of  water,  broken 
agreeably  by  scattered  isles,  washes  to-day  as 
it  did  in  the  days  of  the  gods  the  white  shore, 
rendered  conspicuous  by  the  everlasting 
green  of  the  pine  trees,  which  skirts  the  Land 
of  the  Rising  Sun. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       103 

The  winter,  though  it  begins  its  dreary 
course  with  a  short  period  of  warm  days 
known  as  the  Little  Spring,  is  of  course  not 
without  its  bleak  mornings  with  cutting 
winds  and  icy  wreaths.  But  the  fact  that 
even  as  far  north  as  Tokyo  no  elaborate  sys- 
tem of  warming  rooms  is  at  all  developed, 
and  that  the  occasional  falling  of  snow  is 
hailed  even  by  aged  men  of  letters, 
and  still  more  by  the  numerous  poetasters, 
as  a  fit  occasion  for  a  pedestrian  excur-^ 
sion  to  some  neighbouring  localities  for  a 
better  appreciation  of  the  silvery  world, 
serves  to  show  how  mild  the  cold  is  in  south 
Japan. 

A  people  on  whom  the  surrounding  nature 
always  smiles  so  indulgently  can  be  little  ex- 
pected to  be  driven  to  turn  their  thoughts  in 
the  direction  of  their  own  self,  and  thus  to 
develop  such  a  strong  sense  of  individuality 
as  characterises  the  rigid  northerners;  nor 
are  the  nations  panting  under  a  scorching 
sun  likely  to  share  our  friendly  feelings  to- 
wards nature,  for  with  them  Father  Sun  is 
too  rigorous  to  allow  a  peaceful  enjoyment 
of  his  works. 


104       THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

r 

All  through  the  four  seasons,  which  are 
almost  too  varied  even  for  a  Thomson's  pen, 
eventful  with  the  constant  calls  of  one  after 
another  of  our  flowery  visitors — beginning 
with  the  noble  plum  that  peeps  with  its 
tiny  yellowish-white  eyes  from  under 
the  spotless  repose  of  fleecy  snow,  and  end- 
ing in  the  gay  variety  of  the  chrysanthemum 
— we  have  too  many  allurements  from  out- 
side not  to  leap  into  the  widespread  arms  of 
Mother  Nature  and  dream  away  our  simple, 
our  contented  life  in  her  lap.  True,  there 
also  are  in  Japan  many  instances  of  broken 
hearts  seeking  their  final  rest  under  the  green 
turf  of  an  untimely  grave,  or  else  in  the  grey 
mantle  of  the  Buddhist  monkhood.  But  in 
them,  again,  we  see  the  characteristic  deter- 
mination and  action  of  a  Japanese  at  work. 
To  indulge  in  Hamlet-like  musing,  deep  in 
the  grand  doubt  and  sublime  melancholy  of 
the  never-slumbering  question  '  To  be,  or  not 
to  be  ? '  is  something,  so  to  say,  too  damp  to 
occur  in  the  sunny  thought  of  our  open-air 
life. 

If  asked  to  name  the  most  conspicuous  of 
those  physical  phenomena  which  have  exer- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       105 

cised  so  great  an  influence  on  our  mind,  no 
Japanese  will  hesitate  to  mention  our  most 
beloved  Fuji-no-yama.  This  is  the  highest 
and  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  great  moun- 
tains in  the  main  group  of  the  Japanese 
islands.  Gracefully  conical  in  shape,  lifting 
its  snowclad  head  against  a  serene  back- 
ground 12,365  feet  above  the  sea,  it  has  from 
the  earliest  time  been  the  object  of  unceasing 
admiration  for  the  surrounding  thirteen 
provinces,  and  where  it  stands  out  of  the 
reach  of  the  naked  eye,  winged  words  from 
the  poet's  lyre,  and  flying  leaves  from  the 
artist's  brush,  have  carried  its  never-tiring 
praise  to  all  the  nooks  and  corners  of  the 
Land  of  the  Gods. 

Here  is  one  of  the  earliest  odes  to  Fuji- 
yama, contained  in  a  collection  of  lyrical 
poems  called  Man-yo-shu,  or  '  Myriad 
Leaves/  by  Prince  Moroe  (died  a.d.  757), 
somewhere  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighth 
century : — ■ 

There  on  the  border,  where  the  land  of  Kahi 
Doth  touch  the  frontier  of  Suruga's  land, 
A  beauteous  province  stretched  on  either  hand, 
See  Fujiyama  rear  his  head  on  high! 


106      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

The  clouds  of  heav'n  in  rev'rent  wonder  pause, 
Nor  may  the  birds  those  giddy  heights  essay, 
Where  melt  thy  snows  amid  thy  fires  away, 
Or  thy  fierce  fires  lie  quench'd  beneath  thy  snows. 

What  name  might  fitly  tell,  what  accents  sing, 
Thy  awful,  godlike  grandeur?    'Tis  thy  breast 
That  holdeth  Narusaha's  flood  at  rest, 
Thy  side  whence  Fujikaha's  waters  spring. 

Great  Fujiyama,  tow'ring  to  the  sky! 
A  treasure  art  thou  giv'n  to  mortal  man, 
A  god-protector  watching  o'er  Japan: 
On  thee  for  ever  let  me  feast  mine  eye ! 


This  now  extinct  volcano,  besides  inspir- 
ing poetical  efforts,  has  been  an  inexhaustible 
subject  for  our  pictorial  art;  it  is  enough 
to  mention  the  famous  sets  of  colour  prints, 
representing  the  thirty-six  or  the  hundred 
aspects  of  the  farourite  mountain,  by  Hiro- 
shige,  Hokusai,  etc.  The  groups  of  rural 
pilgrims  that  annually  swarm  from  all  parts 
of  Japan  during  the  two  hottest  months  of 
the  year  to  pay  their  pious  visit  to  the  Holy 
Mount  Fuji,  return  to  their  respective  vil- 
lages deeply  inspired  with  a  feeling  of  rever- 
ence and  of  love  for  the  wonders  and  beauty 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       107 

of  the  remarkable  dawn  they  witnessed  from 
its  summit. 

There  is  many  another  towering  moun- 
tain with  its  set  of  pilgrims,  but  none  can  vie 
with  Fujiyama  for  majestic  grace.  More 
beautiful  than  sublime,  more  serene  than 
imposing,  it  has  been  from  time  im- 
memorial a  silent  influence  on  the  Japanese 
character.  Who  would  deny  that  it  has 
reflected  in  its  serenity  and  grace  as  seen 
on  a  bright  day  all  the  ideals  of  the  Japanese 
mind  ? 

Another  favourite  emblem  of  our  spirit 
is  the  cherry  blossom.  The  cherry  tree, 
which  we  cultivate,  not  for  its  fruit,  but  for 
the  annual  tribute  of  a  branchful  of  its  flow- 
ers, has  done  much,  especially  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  gay  side  of  our  character.  Its 
blossoms  are  void  of  that  sweet  depth  of 
scent  your  rose  possesses,  or  the  calm  repose 
that  characterises  China's  emblematic  peony. 
A  sunny  gaiety  and  a  readiness  to  scatter 
their  heart-shaped  petals  with  a  Samurai's 
indifference  to  death  are  what  make  them  so 
dear  to  our  simple  and  determined  view  of 
life.    There  is  an  ode  known  to  every  Jap- 


108      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

anese  by  the  great  Motoori  Norinaga  (1730- 
1801  a.d.)  which  runs  as  follows: — 1 

Shikishima   no 

Yamata-gokoro  wo 
Hito  to  ha  ba, 

Asahi  ni  nihofu 

Jamazakura-bana. 

(Should  any  one  ask  me  what  the  spirit  of 
Japan  is  like,  I  would  point  to  the  blossoms 
of  the  wild  cherry  tree  bathing  in  the  beams 
of  the  morning  sun.) 

These  words,  laconic  as  they  are,  repre- 
sent, in  my  opinion,  the  fundamental  truth 
about  the  Japanese  mentality — its  weak 
places  as  well  as  its  strength.  They  give  an 
incomparable  key  to  the  proper  understand- 
ing of  the  whole  people,  whose  ideal  it  has 
ever  been  to  live  and  to  die  like  the  cherry 
blossoms,  beneath  which  they  have  these  tens 
of  centuries  spent  their  happiest  hours  every 
spring. 

The  mention  of  a  Japanese  poem  gives  me 
an  opportunity  to  say  something  about  Jap- 
anese poetry.  Like  other  early  people,  our 
forefathers  in  archaic  time  liked  to  express 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       109 

their  thoughts  in  a  measured  form  of  lan- 
guage. The  whole  structure  of  the  tongue 
being  naturally  melodious,  on  account  of  its 
consisting  of  open  syllables  with  clear  and 
sonorous  vowels  and  little  of  the  harsh  con- 
sonantal elements  in  them,  the  number  of 
syllables  in  a  line  has  been  almost  the  only 
feature  that  distinguished  our  poetry  from 
ordinary  prose  composition.  The  taste  for  a 
lengthened  form  of  poems  had  lost  ground 
early,  and  already  at  the  end  of  the  ninth 
century  after  Christ  the  epigrammatic  form 
exemplified  above,  consisting  of  thirty-one 
syllables,  established  itself  as  the  ordinary 
type  of  the  Japanese  odes. 

This  form  subdivides  itself  into  two  parts, 
viz.,  the  upper  half  containing  three  lines  of 
five,  seven,  and  again  five  syllables,  and  the 
lower  half  consisting  of  two  lines  of  seven 
syllables  each.  This  simplicity  has  made  it 
impossible  to  express  in  it  anything  more 
than  a  pithy  appeal  to  our  lyrical  nature ;  epic 
poetry  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word  has 
never  been  developed  by  us. 

But  it  mnst  be  noticed  that  it  is  this  sim- 
plicity of  form  of  our  poetical  expression 


no      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

that  has  put  it  within  the  reach  of  almost 
everybody.  To  all  of  us  without  distinction 
of  class  and  sex  has  been  accorded  the  sacred 
pleasure  of  satisfying  and  thus  developing 
our  poetical  nature,  so  long  as  we  had  a  sub- 
ject to  sing  and  could  count  syllables  up  to 
thirty-one.  The  language  resorted  to  in  such 
a  composition  was  at  first  the  same  as  that  in 
use  in  everyday  life.  But  afterwards  as  suc- 
ceeding forms  of  the  vernacular  gradually 
deviated  from  the  classical  type,  a  special 
grammar  along  with  a  special  vocabulary 
had  to  be  studied  by  the  would-be  poet.  This 
was  avoided,  however,  by  the  development  in 
the  sixteenth  century  of  a  popular  and  still 
shorter  form  of  ode  called  Hokku,  with  much 
less  strict  regulations  about  syntax  and 
phraseology.  This  ultra-short  variety  of 
Japanese  poetry,  consisting  only  of  seventeen 
syllables,  is  in  form  the  upper  half  of  the 
regular  poem.    Here  is  an  example : — 

Asagaho  ni 

Tsurube  torarete 
Morai-midsu. 

Sketchy  as  it  is,  this  tells  us  that  th£  com- 
poser Chiyo,  '  having  gone  to  her  well  one 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       in 

morning  to  draw  water,  found  that  some 
tendrils  of  the  convolvulus  had  twined  them- 
selves around  the  rope.  As  a  poetess  and  a 
woman  of  taste,  she  could  not  bring  herself 
to  disturb  the  dainty  blossoms.  So,  leaving 
her  own  well  to  the  convolvuli,  she  went  and 
begged  water  of  a  neighbour ' — a  pretty  lit- 
tle vignette,  surely,  and  expressed  in  five 
words. 

This  new  movement,  which  owes  its  real 
development  to  a  remarkable  man  called 
Basho  (1644- 1 649),  a  mystic  of  the  Zen 
sect  to  the  tip  of  his  fingers,  had  an  aim  that 
was  strictly  practical.  *  He  wished  to  turn 
men's  lives  and  thoughts  in  a  better  and  a 
higher  direction,  and  he  employed  one 
branch  of  art,  namely  poetry,  as  the  vehicle 
for  the  ethical  influence  to  whose  exercise  he 
devoted  his  life.  The  very  word  poetry  (or 
haikai)  came  in  his  mouth  to  stand  for 
morality.  Did  any  of  his  followers  trans- 
gress the  code  of  poverty,  simplicity,  humil- 
ity, long-suffering,  he  would  rebuke  the  of- 
fender with  a  "  This  is  not  poetry,"  meaning 
"  This  is  not  right. "  His  knowledge  of  na- 
ture and  his  sympathy  with  nature  were  at 


ii2      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

least  as  intimate  as  Wordsworth's,  and  his 
sympathy  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men  was  far  more  intimate;  for  he  never 
isolated  himself  from  his  kind,  but  lived 
cheerfully  in  the  world/  x 

Now,  this  form  of  popular  literature  by 
virtue  of  its  accessibility  even  to  the  poorest 
amateurs  from  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  people, 
was  markedly  instrumental,  as  the  now  class- 
ical form  of  poetry  had  been  during  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  in  the  cultivation  of  taste  and  good 
manners  among  all  classes  of  the  Japanese 
nation.  Even  among  the  ricksha  men  of  to- 
day you  find  many  such  humble  poets,  taking 
snapshots  as  they  run  along  the  stony  path 
of  their  miserable  life.  I  wonder  if  your 
hansom  drivers  are  equally  aspiring  in  this 
respect. 

In  all  these  phases  of  the  development  of 
our  poetry,  we  notice,  as  one  of  its  peculiar- 
ities, a  strong  inclination  to  the  exercise  of 
the  witty  side  of  our  nature.  Even  if  we 
leave  out  of  consideration  the  so-called  '  pil- 
low word'   (makura-kotoba) ,  so  profusely 

aB.    H.    Chamberlain's   Basho   and   the   Japanese 
Epigram,  T.  A.  S.  J.,  vol.  xxx.  pt.  ii. 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       113 

resorted  to  in  our  ancient  poems,  part  of 
which  were  nothing  but  a  naive  sort  of  jeu 
de  mots,  and  the  abundant  use  of  other  plays 
on  words  of  later  development,  known  as 
kakekotoba,  jo,  shuku,  etc.  (haikai-no-uta) , 
it  is  noteworthy  that  poems  of  a  comic  nature 
found  a  special  place  in  the  earliest  imperial 
collection  of  Japanese  odes  named  '  Kokin- 
shifu/  which  was  compiled  in  the  year  a.d. 
908.  This  species  has  flourished  ever  since 
under  the  name  of  Kyoka,  and  also  gave  rise 
to,  a  shortened  form  in  seventeen  syllables, 
called  haikai-no-hokku.  When  in  the  hand 
of  Basho  this  latter  form  developed  itself 
into  something  higher  and  more  serious,  the 
witty  and  satirical  Senryu,  also  in  seventeen 
syllables,  came  to  take  its  place. 

One  thing  to  be  specially  noted  in  this  con- 
nection is  the  introduction  from  China  of  the 
idea  of  poetic  tournaments,  the  beauty  of 
which  consisted  in  the  offhand  and  quick 
composition  of  one  long  series  of  odes  by  sev- 
eral persons  sitting  together,  each  supplying 
in  turn  either  the  upper  half  or  the  lower 
half  as  the  case  might  be,  the  two  in  com- 
bination giving  a  poetical  sense.    This  usage 


ii4      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

of  capping  verses  known  as  renga  came  to 
be  very  popular,  from  the  Court  downward, 
as  early  as  the  thirteenth  century.  After  a 
while  the  same  practice  was  applied  to  comic 
poetry,  thus  producing  the  so-called  haikai- 
no-renga,  or  comic  linked  verses.  This 
coupling  of  verses  gave  plenty  of  occasion 
for  sharpening  one's  wit  as  well  as  one's 
skill  in  extemporising.  It  is  to  a  later  at- 
tempt to  express  all  these  subtleties  in  the 
upper  half  of  the  poem  composed  by  one  per- 
son that  the  present  kokku  owed  its  origin. 
You  can  easily  imagine  the  effect  such  an 
exercise  produced  on  the  popular  mind.  Be- 
sides the  moral  good  which  this  literary  pur- 
suit has  brought  to  the  populace,  it  has  given 
a  fresh  opportunity  for  the  cultivation  of  our 
habit  of  attaching  sense  to  apparently  mean- 
ingless group^of  phenomena,  and  our  fond- 
ness of  laconic  utterance  and  symbolic  repre- 
sentation, not  to  say  anything  about  our  love 
of  nature  and  simplicity.    }  j  J 

All  this  tends  in  my  view  \o  show  that  we 
Japanese  have  a  strong  liking  for  wit  in  the 
wider  sense  of  the  word.  We  try  to  solve  a 
question,  not  by  that  slower  but  surer  way 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       115 

of  calm  deliberation  and  untiring  labour  like 
the  cool-headed  Germans,  but  by  an  incan- 
descent flash  of  inspiration  like  the  hot- 
blooded  Frenchmen.  This  fact  is  singularly- 
preserved  in  the  earlier  sense  of  the  now 
sacred  word  Yamato-damashi,  which  had 
not  its  present  meaning,  viz.,  ■  the  spirit  of 
Japan '  in  the  most  elevated  sense  of  that 
term,  but  signified  the  '  wit  of  the  Japanese ' 
as  contrasted  with  the  '  learning  of  the  Chi- 
nese '  (wakon  as  opposed  to  kansai).  The 
word  tamashi,  which  now  expresses  the  idea 
of  ■  spirit/  corresponds  in  the  compound  in 
question  to  the  French  esprit  in  such  com- 
binations as  homme  d' esprit  or  jeu  d' esprit. 

Turning  now  to  the  consideration  of  other 
sets  of  phenomena,  as  an  illustration  of  the 
Japanese  character,  let  me  tell  you  something 
about  the  tea-ceremony  and  Igfcdred  rites. 

To  begin  with  the  Cha-n^e  (or  Cha-no- 
yu),  or  tea-meeting,  this  much-spoken-of  art 
originated  among  the  Buddhist  priests,  who 
learned  to  appreciate  the  beverage  from  the 
Chinese.  Indeed,  the  tea-plant  itself  was 
first  introduced  into  Japan  along  with  the 
name  Cha  (Chinese  Ch'a)  from  the  Celestial 


n6      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

Empire,  in  the  tenth  century  after  Christ. 
During  the  following  centuries  its  cultivation 
and  the  preparation  of  the  drink  was  monop- 
olised by  the  priesthood,  if  we  except  the 
cases  of  a  few  well-to-do  men  of  letters.  This 
fact  is  gathered  from  the  frequent  mention  of 
tea-cups  offered  to  the  emperor  on  the  occa- 
sion of  an  imperial  visit  to  a  Buddhist  mon- 
astery. During  all  this  time  a  sense  of  some- 
thing precious  and  aristocratic  was  attached 
to  this  aromatic  beverage,  which  had  been 
regarded  as  a  kind  of  rare  drug  of  strange 
virtue  in  raising  depressed  spirits,  and  even 
of  curing  certain  diseases. 

This  high  appreciation  of  the  drink,  as 
well  as  the  need  of  ceremony  in  offering  it 
to  exalted  personages,  gradually  developed 
in  the  hands  of  monks  with  plenty  of  leisure 
and  a  good  kn^ledge  of  the  high  praise  ac- 
corded to  its  virtues  by  the  Chinese  savants, 
into  a  very  complicated  rite  as  to  the  way  of 
serving,  and  of  being  served  with,  a  cup  of 
tea.  A  print  representing  a  man  clad  as  a 
Buddhist  priest  in  the  act  of  selling  the  bev- 
erage in  the  street  at  a  penny  a  cup  is  pre- 
served from  a  date  as  early  as  the  fourteenth 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       117 

century,  showing  that  the  drink  had  then 
come  to  find  customers  even  among  the  com- 
mon people.  But  the  ceremony  of  Cha-no-e, 
as  such,  never  made  its  way  among  them 
until  many  centuries  after.  It  was  at  first 
fostered  and  elaborated  only  among  the 
aristocracy.  Already  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, when  the  luxury  and  extravagance  of 
the  Ashikaga  Shogunate  reached  its  zenith 
in  the  person  of  Yoshimasa  (1435-1490), 
the  tea-ceremony  was  one  of  the  favourite 
pastimes  of  the  highest  classes.  Yoshimasa 
himself  was  a  great  patron  and  connoisseur 
of  the  complicated  rite,  as  well  as  of  other 
branches  of  art,  such  as  landscape  gardening 
and  the  arrangement  of  flowers. 

There  are  two  different  phases  of  the  tea- 
ceremony,  the  regular  course  and  the  sim- 
plified course,  known  among  us  as  the  '  Great 
Tea '  and  the  '  Small  Tea/  In  either  case, 
it  might  be  defined  in  its  present  form  as  a 
system  of  cultivating  good  manners  as  ap- 
plied to  daily  life,  with  the  serving  and  drink- 
ing of  a  cup  of  tea  at  its  centre.  The  main 
stress  is  laid  on  ensuring  outwardly  a  grace- 
ful carriage,  and  inwardly  presence  of  mind. 


n8      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

As  with  the  national  form  of  wrestling 
known  as  ju-jitsu,  with  its  careful  analysis 
of  every  push  and  pull  down  to  the  minutest 
details,  so  with  the  Cha-no-e,  every  move  of 
body  and  limb  in  walking  and  sitting  during 
the  whole  ceremony  has  been  fully  studied 
and  worked  out  so  as  to  give  it  the  most 
graceful  form  conceivable.  At  the  same  time 
the  calm  and  self-control  shown  by  the  par- 
taker in  the  rite  is  regarded  as  an  essential 
element  in  the  performance,  without  which 
ultimate  success  in  it  will  be  quite  impossible. 
So  it  is  more  a  physical  and  moral  training 
than  a  mere  amusement  or  a  simple  quench- 
ing of  thirst.  But  this  original  sense  has 
not  always  been  kept  in  view  even  by  the 
so-called  masters  of  the  tea-ceremony,  who, 
like  your  dancing-masters,  are  generally  con- 
sidered to  be  the  men  to  teach  us  social  eti- 
quette. Thus,  diverted  from  its  original  idea, 
the  Cha-no-e  is  generally  found  to  degener- 
ate into  a  body  of  conventional  and  meaning- 
less formalities,  which,  even  in  its  most 
abbreviated  form  as  the  '  Small  Tea/  is 
something  very  tiresome,  if  not  worse.  To 
sit  a  la  japonaise  (not  a  la  turque,  which  is 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       119 

not  considered  polite)  for  an  hour,  if  not  for 
hours  together,  on  the  matted  floor  to  see 
the  celebration  of  the  monotonous  rite,  dar- 
ing to  talk  only  little,  and  even  then  not 
above  a  whisper,  in  the  smallest  imaginable 
tea-room,  is  not  what  even  a  born  Japanese 
of  the  present  day  can  much  appreciate,  much 
less  so  Europeans,  who  would  prefer  being 
put  in  the  stocks,  unless  they  be  themselves 
Cha-jin  or  tea-ceremonialists,  that  is  to  say, 
eccentrics.  How  to  open  the  sliding-door ; 
how  to  shut  it  each  time;  how  to  bring  and 
arrange  the  several  utensils,  with  their  sev- 
eral prescribed  ways  of  being  handled,  into 
the  tea-room ;  how  to  sit  down  noiselessly  in 
front  of  the  boiling  kettle  which  hangs  over 
a  brasier ;  how  to  open  the  lid  of  the  kettle ; 
how  to  put  tea-powder  in  the  cup;  how  to 
pour  hot  water  over  it ;  how  to  stir  the  now 
green  water  with  a  bamboo  brush;  how  to 
give  the  mixture  a  head  of  foam;  how  and 
where  to  place  the  cup  ready  for  the  expect- 
ing drinker — this  on  the  part  of  the  person 
playing  the  host  or  hostess ;  and  now  on  the 
part  of  the  guest — how  to  take  a  sweet  from 
the  dish  before  him  in  preparation  for  the 


42$      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

coming  aromatic  drink;  how  to  take  up  the 
cup  now  given  him ;  how  to  hold  it  with  both 
hands;  how  to  give  it  a  gentle  stir;  how  to 
drink  it  up  in  three  sips  and  a  half ;  how  to 
wipe  off  the  trace  of  the  sipping  left  on  the 
edge  of  the  cup;  how  to  turn  the  cup  hori- 
zontally round;  how  to  put  it  down  within 
the  reach  of  his  host  or  hostess,  etc.,  etc.,  ad 
infinitum — these  are  some  of  the  essential 
items  to  be  learned  and  practised.  And  for 
every  one  of  them  there  is  a  prescribed  form 
even  to  the  slightest  move  and  curve  in  which 
a  finger  should  be  bent  or  stretched,  always 
in  strict  accordance  with  the  attitude  of  other 
bodies  in  direct  connection  with  it.  The 
whole  ceremony  in  its  degenerated  form  is 
an  aggregate  of  an  immense  number  of 
comme  il  faufs,  with  practically  no  margin 
for  personal  taste.  But  even  behind  its  pres- 
ent frigidity  we  cannot  fail  to  discern  the 
true  idea  and  the  good  it  has  worked  in  past 
centuries.  It  has  done  a  great  deal  of  good, 
especially  in  those  rough  days  at  the  end  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  when  great  warriors 
returning  blood-stained  from  the  field  of  bat- 
tle learned  how  to  bow  their  haughty  necks 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       121 

in  admiration  of  the  curves  of  beauty,  and 
how  to  listen  to  the  silvery  note  of  a  boiling 
tea-kettle.  They  could  not  help  their  stern 
faces  melting  into  a  naive  smile  in  the  serene 
simplicity  of  the  tea-room,  whose  arrange- 
ment, true  to  the  Zen  taste  to  the  very  last 
detail  of  its  structure,  showed  a  studied 
avoidance  of  ostentation  in  form  and  colour. 
To  this  day  it  is  always  this  Zen  taste  that 
rules  supreme  in  the  decoration  of  a  Japanese 
house. 

Visit  a  Japanese  gentleman  whose  taste  is 
not  yet  badly  influenced  by  the  Western  love 
of  show  and  symmetry  in  his  dwelling :  you 
will  find  the  room  and  the  whole  arrange- 
ment free  from  anything  of  an  ostentatious 
nature.  The  colour  of  the  walls  and  sliding- 
doors  will  be  very  subdued,  but  not  on  that 
account  gloomy.  In  the  niche  you  will  see 
one  or  a  single  set  of  kakemono,  or  pictures, 
at  the  foot  of  which,  just  in  the  middle  of  the 
slightly  raised  floor  of  the  niche,  we  put  some 
object  of  decoration — a  sculpture,  a  vase 
with  flowers,  etc.  These  are  both  carefully 
changed  in  accordance  with  the  season,  or 
else  in  harmony  with  the  ruling  idea  of  the 


122      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

day,  when  the  room  is  decorated  in  celebra- 
tion of  some  event  or  guest.  This  rule  ap- 
plies to  the  other  objects  connected  with  the 
room — utensils,  cushions,  screens,  etc. 

The  European  way  of  arranging  a  room 
is,  generally  speaking,  rather  revolting  to  our 
taste.  We  take  care  not  to  show  anything 
but  what  is  absolutely  necessary  to  make  a 
room  look  agreeable,  keeping  all  other  things 
behind  the  scenes.  Thus  we  secure  to  every 
object  of  art  that  we  allow  in  our  presence  a 
fair  opportunity  of  being  appreciated.  This 
is  not  usually  the  case  in  a  European  dwell- 
ing. I  have  very  often  felt  less  crowded  in  a 
museum  or  in  a  bazaar  than  in  your  drawing- 
rooms.  '  You  know  so  well  how  to  expose 
to  view  what  you  have/  I  have  frequently 
had  occasion  to  say  to  myself,  '  but  you  have 
still  much  to  learn  from  us  how  to  hide,  for 
exposition  is,  after  all,  a  very  poor  means  of 
showing.' 

To  return  to  the  main  point,  we  owe  to 
the  Cha-no-e  much  of  the  present  standard 
of  our  taste,  which  is,  in  its  turn,  nothing 
more  than  the  Zen  ways  of  looking  at  things 
as  applied  to  everyday  life.    This  is  no  won- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       123 

der,  when  we  remember  that  it  was  in  the 
tasteful  hands  of  the  Zen  priests  that  the 
whole  ceremony  reached  its  perfection.  In- 
deed, the  word  cha  is  a  term  which  conveys 
to  this  day  the  main  features  of  the  Contem- 
plative sect  to  our  mind. 

In  connection  with  the  tea-ceremony,  there 
are  some  sister  arts  which  have  been  equally 
effective  in  the  proper  cultivation  of  our 
taste.  Landscape  gardening,  in  which  our 
object  is  to  make  an  idealised  copy  of  some 
natural  scene,  is  an  art  that  has  been  loved 
and  practised  among  us  for  more  than  a 
thousand  years,  although  it  was  not  indig- 
enous like  most  things  Japanese.  This  prac- 
tice of  painting  with  tree  and  stone  soon  gave 
rise  to  another  art,  the  miniature  reproduc- 
tion of  a  favourite  natural  scene  on  a  piece 
of  board,  and  this  is  the  forerunner  of  the 
later  bonkei,  or  the  tray-landscape,  and  its 
sister  bonsai,  or  the  art  of  symbolising  an  ab- 
stract idea,  such  as  courage,  majesty,  etc.,  by 
means  of  the  growth  of  a  dwarf  tree. 

The  same  love  that  we  feel  for  a  symbolic 
representation  is  also  to  be  traced  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  flowers.    The  practice  of  pre- 


124      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

serving  cut  branches,  generally  of  flowering 
trees,  in  a  vase  filled  with  water  is  often  men- 
tioned in  our  classical  literature.  But  it  was 
first  in  the  sixteenth  century  that  it  assumed 
its  present  aspect,  when,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Cha-no-e,  it  found  a  great  patron  in  that 
most  influential  dilettante  Shogun  Yoshi- 
masa.  Already  in  his  time  there  were  a  great 
many  principles  to  be  learned  concerning  the 
way  to  give  the  longest  life  and  the  most 
graceful  form  to  the  branches  put  in  a  vase, 
besides  investing  the  whole  composition  with 
a  symbolic  meaning.  Up  to  this  day  we  look 
upon  this  art  as  very  helpful  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  taste  among  the  fair  sex,  who  receive 
long  courses  of  instruction  by  the  generally 
aged  masters  of  floral  arrangement,  who, 
along  with  their  teaching  in  the  treatment 
of  plants,  know  how  to  instil  ethics  in  their 
young  pupils,  taking  the  finished  vase  of 
flowers  as  the  subject  of  conversation.  The 
masters  of  the  tea-ceremony  are  also  well 
versed  in  arranging  flowers  in  that  simple 
manner  which  is  yet  full  of  meaning  called 
cha-bana,  or  the  '  Zen  type  of  floral  art/ 
You  see  how  much  all  these  arts  have  con- 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT      125 

tributed  to  the  production  of  our  taste,  whose 
ideals  are  the  dislike  of  loudness  and  love  of 
symbolic  representation,  with  a  delicate  feel- 
ing for  the  beauty  of  line  as  seen  in  things 
moving  or  at  rest.  This  last  quality  must 
have  been  immensely  augmented  by  the  linear 
character  of  our  drawing,  and  also  by 
the  great  importance  we  are  accustomed 
to  attach  to  the  shape  and  the  strokes  of 
the  characters  when  we  are  learning  to 
write. 

All  these  qualities  you  will  see  exemplified 
in  any  Japanese  work  of  art — from  a  large 
picture  down  to  a  tiny  wooden  carving.  Take 
up  a  girl's  silk  dress  and  examine  it  care- 
fully, and  note  how  the  lining  is  dyed  and 
embroidered  with  as  great,  if  not  greater 
care,  in  order  to  make  it  harmonise  in  colour 
and  design  with  the  visible  surface  and  add 
some  exquisite  meaning.  Do  not  forget  to 
look  at  the  back  when  you  come  across  a 
lacquered  box,  for  it  is  not  only  the  surface 
that  receives  our  careful  attention.  And 
above  all,  you  must  always  keep  in  mind 
that  our  artists  think  it  a  duty  to  be  sug- 
gestive rather  than  explicit,    and   to   leave 


126      THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT 

something  of  their  meaning  to  be  divined  by 
those  who  contemplate  their  works. 

The  time  is  now  come  to  conclude  my 
essay  at  an  exposition  of  the  Japanese  spirit. 
I  think  I  have  given  you  occasion  to  see 
something  of  both  the  strong  and  the  weak 
sides  of  my  countrymen ;  for  it  is  just  where 
our  favourable  qualities  lie  that  you  will  also 
find  the  corresponding  weaknesses.  The 
usual  charges  brought  against  us,  that  we  are 
precocious,  unpractical,  frivolous,  fickle,  etc., 
are  not  worthy  of  serious  attention,  because 
they  are  all  of  them  easily  explained  as  but 
the  attendant  phenomena  of  the  transitory 
age  from  which  we  are  just  emerging.  Even 
the  more  sound  accusation  of  our  want  of 
originality  must  be  reconsidered  in  face  of 
so  many  facts  to  the  contrary,  facts  which 
show  us  to  be  at  least  in  small  things  very 
original,  almost  in  the  French  sense  of  that 
word.  That  we  have  always  been  ready  to 
borrow  hints  from  other  countries  is  in  a 
great  measure  to  be  explained  by  the  con- 
sideration that  we  had  from  the  very  be- 
ginning the  disadvantage  and  the  advantage 


THE  JAPANESE  SPIRIT       127 

of  having  as  neighbours  nations  with  a  great 
start  in  the  race-course  of  civilisation.  The 
cause  of  our  being  small  in  great  things," 
while  great  in  small  things,  can  be  partly 
found  in  the  financial  conditions  of  the  coun- 
try and  in  the  non-individual  nature  of  the 
culture  we  have  received.  These  delicate 
questions  will  have  to  be  raised  again  some 
centuries  hence,  when  a  healthy  admixture 
of  the  European  civilisation  has  been  tried — 
a  civilisation  the  effect  of  which  has  been,  on 
the  whole,  so  beneficial  to  our  development, 
that  we  feel  it  a  most  agreeable  duty  grate- 
fully to  acknowledge  our  immense  obligation 
to  the  nations  of  the  West. 


*> 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


ji)N  2  0  1966 


Jfflh   IRfi  92  Rep 


mwm 


4 


REC'P  LP  JiPR    2  70 -12AM 


"H7— 


APR    «  1970 


LD  21A-60m-10,'65 
(F7763sl0)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YB   ^B^OD 


UmilMi!  |  ■"'mill  ' 


(Sam 


